i take 25g of unflavoured whey (it's cheaper) in my pre-shake along with 3g taurine (like drinking a red bull with less crap) and 5g of creatine, it's all your body needs per day. i am around half hour-hour latest before my workout, drinking it straight before i just get a headache from the creatine. the taurine and creatine give a bit of a boost. in my post shake i have 25g of whey again mixed with dextrose. a lot of people say you don't need dextrose, but personally i feel it gives me a bit of a energy boost as well as speeding up recovery time. it's also cheap got all my stuff from my protein, waited a little while for my delivery, but it was worth it. always a few promo codes floating around as well. diet-wise i'm a student. i'm not going to eat six times a day. i try and get some breakfast in, getting all the carbs and crap in first because it's gonna be burned out during weight training and cardio anyway. along with my shakes, i will cook chicken a lot of time for dinner, always a different meal you can make, and always gonna be tasty. i aim to train at least 5 times a week, sometimes it can be 4 depending on how busy i am, or sometimes it can be 6. always a day you have to miss for whatever reasons, so i use that as 'recovery' day. i don't have a specific days in which i do specific things, but it will usually follow routines like this, i just catch-up what i've missed out on the past few days and shuffle it about every now and again. bi's & triceps bi's & shoulders tri's & chest bi's & legs tri's & legs bi's & back some other shit with back. always a 10 minute run before the start of each workout. and i will do some ab work like sit ups and cable crunches, sometimes rests and vice versa. i just tend to shuffle it about a lot to make it less boring. i've been going consistently since around the start of last year, and i've still a lot to learn, especially since i've only recently started takings legs and back more seriously. and i've noticed since then, with squats and deadlifts the last of my puppy fat has started replacing itself for abs. probably crap advice to someone else on here, but it's working for me.