[napoleon]

So its been a while since Ive been in the gym my work and living situation has kinda prohibited it, but Im planning on starting sooner this year in an attempt to get myself together for next year.

Long story short someone on here helped me get a great workout routine together last year which I followed pretty well and had some good luck with, appearance ehh not so much but I was much stronger than I ever was and felt good. Ive always had a tough time getting the diet down though. Well the last few weeks Ive been kinda sitting down in my spare time planning out my routine and my diet for my comeback to the gym. Someone suggested trying that fitday calendar. I was told to keep my calorie intake around 3500 a day if I was working out hard which I felt I was, lifting to exhaustion and cardio both 4 times a week to build muscle and lose some fat or atleast minimize adding any more fat. Well after plugging into the fitday calenday all the stuff I was eating and even being generous with some stuff I was coming up at around 2600 calories about 30% coming from protein, 40% coming from carbs and 30% from fats, give or take. Thats just about what Im suggested to just maintain my current physique(5'10", 19%bf 195lbs)

Now given that I felt I hit a plateau and never really gained much size would my calorie intake or lack thereof really have hampered my efforts of gaining any considerable muscle? I plan on getting back on the ball in about a month, I worked out all the stuff on the fitday site and came up with around 3500 calories as suggested I eat with 22% coming from fat, 35% carbs and 43% coming from protein, it takes quite a bit of food to get to those numbers!

So now does all this sound about right? Should I ease into this diet and calorie level or jump right in on my first day back training? I was going to give myself about 3 weeks taking it easy getting back into the motions so I dont hurt anything.

Thanks