Hey! After reading through tons of advice on this board and TrainerDan's website, I'm going to start CKD! I'm so excited to do this! I hope I finally lose the 30 lbs I've been trying to lose. I'm a little scared of the carbs in the carb up phase but to be able to have carbs and to look good/be healthy by cardio and weights sounds good to me! Can you experienced buff guys and gals and others on the way give me your opinions, suggestions, and advice? Here's my plan that I started this week:
Exercise -
Monday - 45 min AM cardio on elliptical (interval traning); 45 min PM full body weight lifting; 45 min PM cardio on elliptical
Tuesday - 45 min AM cardio on elliptical; 30 min PM cardio on elliptical
Wednesday - 45 min AM cardio on elliptical; 45 min PM full body weight lifting
Thursday - 45 min AM cardio on elliptical; 30 min PM cardio on elliptical
Friday - 45 min AM cardio on elliiptical; 45 min PM full body weightlifting
Food -
I'll try to stay under 20 g carbs Sun - Friday evening. Then I'll start my carb up on Friday dinner and go til Saturday dinner. I'm scared to do more than 24 hours. I did the body fat and nutritional requirements off of TrainerDan's website. What happens if I get more like 1400 cals instead of 1500 or 1600?
A question about lifting weights - The gym at my work only has a machine for quads and calves, one for shoulders and forearms, and one for chest. I'm not going to try to say the names of the machines because I would just embarass myself since I don't know too much about weights yet. There's also free weights. Ok, the question is: for lower body, will doing different floor exercises that target different muscles in addition to using the one machine they have be enough to work out legs/lower body?
Thanks for your help!!

Hi! Here are some tips:

Move your Weds weightlifting session to tuesday. Do Mon and Tues workouts around 15 reps of little weight.

You don't need to cardio every day, maybe just 2 or 3 days.

Eat some Smarties, Fun Dip powder, or some other form of dextrose immediatly after your Friday depletion workout, which is circuit training about 8 reps.

Start carbing after you have your dextrose. Try to keep the calories about 78% 15% 7% C P F.

As far as your gym. What I think you should do is: For lower body, do leg press or squats, leg extensions, leg curls, and calf raises. That gets every muscle down there. For upper body, get your chest, back, traps/shoulders, and after that if you have time do your biceps.

Hope that helps!!!

Thanks for the advice! I do have a couple of questions, if you don't mind
Circuit Training - How exactly do I do circuit training? Is this when I mix some cardio in with lifting weights? I've heard of it but want to make sure I do it right.
Mon & Tues workout - Am I not suppose to have a day between to rest muscles? Or are you saying I should do upper body one day and the lower the next?
Cardio - Since I have 30 lbs to lose, wouldn't it be good if I did a lot of cardio so I can burn up more fat while I'm in ketosis? Or maybe I could cut my evening cardio to 30 min instead of 45 min. Thanks for your advice!!

Oh, I didn't know that you have to lose 30 pounds, fairly quickly I guess? Well, if you want to cardio all the time that's ok I guess.

You should recheck your planning, especially plan well your two first week, because you might not have the energy at first to perform them.

also 4 sessions a week of cardio is enought!

I lost 40lbs of fat without cardio on CKD

You're right - I am finding it hard to do so much cardio. I'm just really ready to burn off as much fat as I can. I'm having a hard time getting into ketosis too so I try to do a bunch of cardio to burn off all carbs so I can get into ketosis. I've been doing about 30-45 min cardio first thing in the morning then 30-45 more in the evening, lifting weights for 1 hour, 3 times a week. Would that do it?
My body seems pretty messed up - it never wants to lose fat no matter what I do.
Thanks for you advice! That's great that you lost 40 lbs of fat! Impressive!!

You can try 4 things to get into keto

the first two I wont mention as you are not an experience, advanced bodybuilder in term of "supplements" .

the two others might help you get in keto
and I say might, slowly anyway

1- ALA
2- Cayenne paper.