If you are a guy that cannot say no to an extra helping of beans, or meat at the table everyday when you eat then chances are you don't really need the whey protein.

I do, cuz I'm a picky son of a gun when it comes to food even though I love meat myself.

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Actually, 1g protein per kg is overkill. I weight 155 lbs, which is about 71 kg. That would be about 71g of protein daily. I know I'm nowhere near that in my daily consumption. Besides, you really can't eat too much protein, especially if trying to gain muscle mass.

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a little bit of advice from my experiences doing general training, paintball, and mixed martial arts:
you likely don't need the protein unless you're not getting enough in your diet. and the vast majority of us do.
cardio is your friend. period. do lots.
pushups, situps, crunches, all when done properly, are also your friend. i've just started to train again, but aim for 200 a day on average. start lower, you'll get there.
when you do weights, don't lift heavy, take about half, or a bit more, of your max weight, and do reps until it burns. then stretch a bit, and do another set of as many as you can possibly bear to do.
once you're getting to the point where you feel you can increase the weight, go up ten or fifteen pounds form there, and see how it goes. it'll take a while until you can build up the proper muscle tone to increase the weight, i personally go for about 70 reps in a row before i stop, and that's the point i hit where i increase the weight.
that method of lifting lighter and doing piles of repetitions will give your muscles a lot of endurance as well as strength, which is a lot more useful that those guys that have gigantic hypertrophied muscles that can lift three hundred pounds, but only do it a couple times.
(when was the last time you had to lift three hundred pounds, as opposed to say, seventy, but a bunch of times?)
personally, i need to get into some physical fitness program again, and tonight is a good night to start.

good luck to you, and my best advice its to be careful, and talk to a doctor if you get serious. these methods work great for me, but i don't know how well they'll do for you. everyone is different.

as to the original question, yes it's ok to combine cardio and weights. just make sure to take days off from weight training to let your muscles repairr themselves.

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I guess it really depends on your goals. If weight (i.e. fat) loss is your goal, building muscle is your best bet because (a) building muscle requires a great deal of energy and (b) muscle cells are inefficient in that they consume a lot of energy even when not being used...this is obviously a good thing in regards to the above goal. With that in mind, you should do things that optimize building muscle. Nutritional requirements aside, there are only two things: lift and rest. The lifting aspect is a no-brainer for most people...it's the resting part that people screw up. The important thing to remember is that you are not building muscle when you lift. You are tearing up muscle. You build muscle when you rest and this is why you continue to burn calories at an elevated rate after lifting but don't experience the same effect after cardio. You get more out of lifting for an hour than you do running for an hour because you get that bonus after effect from lifting. Given that, doing things that interfere with rest will interfere with muscle growth such as working a muscle too soon (48-72 hrs is the recommended rest time between lifting sessions for a given muscle group) as well as depleting your body of nutrients when it needs it the most (umm...such as cardio immediately after lifting).

I'll recap:
-lift for the best fat burning
-rest a given muscle group 48-72 hrs
-cardio before lifting
--warms you up for lifting
--does not cheat muscles of nutrients after lifting when it's most needed
--consume calories and protein immediately after lifting to aid in building muscle (there is a 30-60 min window when nutrient uptake is at it's greatest...also a good time to consume creatine if you do that.)

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Hmmm, I'm just getting into weights and more-than-just-walking fitness, so you guys all seem to know much more about it, but I did read in relation to the OP that cardio after lifting was a good thing? Something about the lifting session quickly burning through the glycogen stores, meaning more fat burning during the cardio. However, as Hwyman pointed out, muscles need that protien REAL quick after lifting, so what do you guys think would be the best option on a mixed-day workout? Would the cardio session essentially extend the 'working' phase of the lifting session, so if you had your shake or whatever after the cardio, would that be just as good? Anyone?

Well...the thing is that most forms of cardio focus on the legs, so the other mucles that are not in use (i.e. upper body) are just waiting around for nutrition...most of which are going to the legs and heart in order for you to do the cardio. If you *really* want to do cardio on a lifting day, the best thing is to do them on opposite end of the day. For example, I have a combined day on Thursday...I run in the morning and lift in the evening. Of course, I'm training for a half-marathon so it's more of a case that I *really* want to lift. It's completely optional and doesn't really help me that much with the running. In some ways, if I don't do it right, it will work against me (i.e. extra weight and bulk I have to run around with.) By the same token, cardio in a weight lifting regimen is optional and can work against you if not done right. If you really are doing it to keep weight down, you are better rewarded by focusing on your caloric intake. The weight lifting will take care of the rest. Better still, don't do cardio for the sake of doing cardio, but as a component of a sport or activity you love that you can practice on the weekend...you know...like paintball.

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I was always under the impression that it's easier to burn fat while doing weights...

weights help push fat outside of your muscle groups... which helps the cardio burn the fat easier.

Last year when I started working out I would do light weights & ab workouts... then run in the afternoon & I was losing like 5 lbs a week. I went from 230 down to 165 for a good while... then I slacked off b/c a new job did not allow me time to work out & I crept back up to 190lbs. *shudder*

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I have been working out since the beginning of the year. I played a game late 07 and both of my calves gave up on me. So I knew something had to be done.

I run for 30 min then weights for 45. Eating habits made a huge difference. I gave up on fast food altogether. Rice once a week but it has to be brown.
No, I mean no white bread.

Doing this I for the year (one month off) I lost 40lbs and gained load of muscle.

The wife like's!

I just began working out with a friend who purchased the P90 workout..intense stuff man.

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You don't burn fat when doing weights...or while doing anything anerobic for that matter. You are completely running off of your glycogen stores during those type of short, intense periods. Your body has about a 20-30 minute supply (while working continuously at a moderate-high intensity) which is a lot. You body does access you fat stores during low-intensity activities...like repairing muscle and even walking a normal pace. You burn more fat walking a given distance than you do running it.

As for the second statement...well...think about it. If our muscles were fatty as the statement implies, I'd be going to McDonald's every night instead of the gym if I wanted to make my muscles big! The fat sits on top of the muscles and underneath the skin....this is why it's so hard to get washboard abs (or any kind of definition anywhere on your body. It's not that your abs are small...it's because there's a lot of fat sitting on top of them.

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well I dunno the exact reason... that was just a theory. But I know it worked for me.

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