Cardio and weight training is a must, no two ways about it. Cardio 3-6 days a week, preferably HIIT. Cycling will get the job done but it puts a lot of strain on your quads, which makes it difficult to gain strength in the squat rack.
Find a nice piece of pavement/grass and do shuttle runs/wind sprints/suicides.
Usually a good setup is 2 minutes walk, 30-60 seconds sprint, 2 minutes walk, 30-60 seconds sprint, etc etc etc. Go until you've done 5-8 sprints.
Weight lifting should be covered already in the stickies.
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We preach beef/veggies, but the overall theme is the paleolithic diet. The diet that our body is still pretty much adapted to and which is the diet that brought us away from our banana munching ancestors into our current(perhaps not the right word) state.
Our ancestors ate these foods:
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Red meat from wild animals
Bird/reptile eggs
Chicken and other meats from reptiles
Coastal and river fish
Sea mammals like seals/ etc.
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Fruits in natural quantities. By this I mean they didn't eat 40 oranges a day because at the time oranges didn't grow in protected orchards.
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Edible plants/vegetables, not huge amounts but still present in the everyday diet.
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Ground carbs, like potatoes, yams, and other roots.
Other carbs like nuts(almonds, peanuts, etc)
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Since man has adopted agriculture and made grains a large part of his diet, our physique has changed and become less muscular and more prone to store bodyfat. Probably in part due to the general wheat/etc intolerance and also because we've had to work less to get our food.
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-If you want a muscular physique, eat all of the foods listed above, don't pick on one thing(like only eating chicken, or only eating beef). There are scientific reasons for that but also so you dont get bored of what you're eating, consistency is big.
-Eat fruits/carbs but don't fill up on them, eat them with each meal in the morning & post-workout.
-Eat your vegetables with each meal in the afternoon, except post-workout.
-Eat the fatty protein(red meat, eggs) in the first half of the day and the leaner protein(fish/chicken) in the second half of the day.
-No carbs after the sun goes down.
-4L+ water each day, for someone going to the gym and doing cardio each day, 4L is a BARE minimum, should be closer to 6-8L a day.
-Obviously if fat loss is a priority for you, stay away from processed foods/grains/candy/soda/etc. Those aren't in the diet of our ancestors... Though I do believe cavemen went out to the bar on friday night for a few beers
Obviously keep a balance between being too slack and too anal. Anal enough that you'll get results and slack enough that you'll be able to maintain the lifestyle indefinitely.
That's as much as I care to break it down.
cheers
edit:
To make it a little more realistic for you, I'll read the reciept from my food shopping trip earlier today:
2x natural plain yogurt
2x 18 eggs
2kgs of red meat(1.5 kgs of beef, 0.5kgs of kangaroo meat)
1kg of natural middle bacon
2x green capsicums
4x navel oranges
4x assorted apples
4x bananas
1 tree of brocolli
4 brown onions
8 tomatoes
1 mango
1 jar of tomato paste
a few canned/frozen meals in case I run out of food.
That's roughly 4 days of food plus some extras.
