Q: Hi Mike, I am 31 Years of Male from India, my current weight is 81 Kgs. I am trying to reduce about 8-10 kgs of weight and gaining a ittle muscle and looking for suggestions around the same.. While I am working out a gym 3-4 days a week but i am provided with little or no help around my diet. I am strict veggie and It will be geat if you can suggest me a good diet plan for my needs.

My workout plan is fairly simple as well. I start with a 10 min jog and 10 min cycling. This is followed up with double body part light weight training and abs thereafter (Day 1 - Upper, Day 2 - Sides and Day 3 - Lower). I end my workout with a 15 min jog and 5 min walk followed by some stretching of my back. Any suggestions on the above will be highly welcome!

A: Unfortunately I haven't yet added diet plans specifically for vegetarians, but I have added a few good vegetarian recipes. You should aim, roughly for about 2000 calories daily consisting of 200 grams protein, 100 grams carbs, and 90 grams fat. Unfortunately, as a strict vegetarian, it will be very hard to get that much protein with that few carbs. So you might have to compromise and settle for something like 150 grams protein and 150 grams carbs daily. Use my Recipes section on the top menu to get an idea of what good fat-burning vegetarian recipes look like and put together a daily diet for yourself roughly fitting the calorie and grams amount I outlined about. Of course you probably won't follow it 100% every day, but it will serve as your goal.

If you can drink milk or eat cheese or eggs you should incorporate those into your diet. If not, then focus on lentils, peas, beans, soy, tofu, and other legume products since they are the most protein-rich vegan foods. For fats, nuts and seeds provide healthy fats and some amount of protein as well. Minimize using oils (because they are very calorie-rich and it's easy to overeat them) and definitely minimize use of oils in frying (which turns oils from a healthy food to very a unhealthy one). Most of your carbs should come from the same legume that provide you with protein but try to also eat as much raw leafy green veggies as possible -- these include lettuce, broccoli, spinach, etc.

Once you have your daily diet plan ready, come back here and post it in detail and I'll make any suggestions on improving it as appropriate.

For your workout plan you didn't post much detail on the exercises that you do, but it sounds alright overall. Focus on large compound exercises using freeweights like squats, lunges, deadlifts, pullups and pulldowns, rows, and chest and shoulder presses. Also don't be afraid to use heavier weights -- enough to exhaust you in under 12 reps. You should only do so once you are very comfortable with correctly performing any given exercise to avoid injuries. But once you have that level of comfort lifting heavy like that will be a lot more effective than lifting light weights. You may want to read http://www.mikesfitness.com/content/weight-training to learn more about effective weight training and to see some sample programs. Good luck!