Intermediate Fitness Advice Sought

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m starting from being pretty close to sedentary (for the last 6 months, at least), but know my body decently and know good form for lifting, etc. I’ve never tried to lose weight before, as a skinny guy, but a sedentary job and aging is starting to catch up to me.

My goals:
Slow fat loss (with an ultimate goal of going from 20% or so to 10-12% body fat)
Maintenance of muscle (or an increase, if that’s possible while losing fat)
Increased cardiovascular fitness
Core strength (to avoid lower back problems from my sedentary job)

The plan for the first ten weeks is lifting followed immediately by moderate cardio, every other day:
Couch to 5k (running around 85% HRM in the running stages)
Basic compound lifts (squats, press / bench press, deadlift) doing three heavy sets of 5
Calorie deficit of 3500 kcal /wk

I have three questions:

(1) Is there any better way to maintain muscle while losing weight than what I’m doing? Should I eat slightly more, or be lifting at a lower intensity? Should I try to lose fat more aggressively, and just be resigned to losing muscle that I can regain later?

(2) Instead of moderate intensity aerobic intervals like the C25k plan, should I be doing either higher intensity intervals, or else lower intensity aerobics (i.e. 65-75% HRM)? Or running more slowly?

(3) Would I be better off doing the cardio on the off-days, rather than immediately after lifting? If it doesn’t make much difference, I prefer to keep them on the same day.

I* know the key is just to do something and stick to it*. But I am more motivated when I know I’m on the right track (and I’m on week three of this tentative plan, FWIW). Any advice or experience is much appreciated. Thanks!

2

I’m pretty sure you won’t want to do this, but getting a part-time job loading trailers at UPS or FedEx might give you what you’re looking for - fat loss, increased strength and endurance with small gains in muscle mass. I guess it’s the equivalent of an aerobic workout with a lot of resistance. They’re more or less constantly hiring and have a variety of 3-5 hour shifts. It’ll take up more of your time than the gym, but you’ll also get to take home some cash every week instead of paying someone to work out.

…Alternately, you could try working out with a kettlebell, which actually simulates hard manual labor pretty well, and you could do easily in your own home/backyard. A few triathlete friends have incorporated kettlebells into their workouts and they all rave about them.

3

The best thing you can do for your physique lifting-wise is a simple 5 x 5 program. Follow it as written, push yourself on the weights, and you will put on muscle.

4

That’s essentially what I’m doing (I think). I said 5x3 in my post, but I’m doing a couple of warm-up sets for each exercise, so it comes out pretty close to 5x5, though that last 3 are closer to straight sets than increasing. But I’m doing all those movements, in basically that order (though I’m doing squats before deadlifts, generally).

But as I say in my post, I’m also running a calorie deficit. Are these two going to be incompatible? Or rather, how soon should I expect them to become incompatible?