[joop]

Didn't read your other threads, or the replies in this one, but I'll answer your questions as best I can.

1. Main purpose is to increase cardiovascular health/fitness. Some people will say the main purpose of cardio is to lose bodyfat - but bodyfat can be lost without cardio.

2. Depends on your goals. You said your goal was to 'become healthier' - so from this perspective I would say 3x 30-40mins would be a minimum. The more the better, though - a person doing cardio 5days a week for an hour will generally have better cardiocascular health than the 3x 30-40mins guy... all other things being equal.

3. Don't really understand question - but generally people are aiming for health/fitness or fatloss.

4. Yes, too much is bad. If you do too much, you will fall into an overtrained state and be more susceptible to injury, your immune system will be weakened, and you will generally start to feel like ass. Each person has their own tolerance, a highly trained cyclist, for example, will be able to do 10x more cardio than an untrained person - with no ill effects. How much is too much for you? Do what you can until you start to feel overtrained, then back off a bit. Read up on overtraining on the net, but symptoms include tiredness, fatigue, not sleeping well, lowered appetite, and general malaise.

5. Swimming and cycling are great in my opinion. Both are low/no impact. Swimming has the benefit of working the full body, also. How you do them can vary. If you want to lose bodyfat, high intensity interval training has been proven to burn the most fat. But personally, when I'm dieting, I like to do long sessions of low intensity. If you're looking for general health and fitness, I would say a mix would be best.

6. Depends on the type of cardio session. If you've done a long intense session, you want a good hit of protein and some fast acting carbs - something around 40g of whey and 60g dextose (this will vary on your bodyweight, but is a reasonable starting point). If you don't wanna go down the route of buying protein powder and dextrose - just get some flavoured low-fat milk and drink that after your session... about a litre of that will provide about what I mentioned, only the protein isn't "fast acting", but whatever. If you've done a a low intensity session, I don't think you need any sort of special PWO meal - you haven't tapped stored glycogen, so just eat whatever you usually would.

Only other thing I wanted to comment on was I get the feeling you're trying to build muscle and lower bodyfat at the same time? If you are, it's gonna be a very slow process. And you're gonna need a good knowledge of training and nutrition to pull it off - something it doesn't sound like you have. If you wanna lose the small amount of fat you're concerned about, my advice is to just go on a diet until you lose it - then focus on building muscle, if that's your goal.

Also, you mentioned you want to be healthier and build muscle, like the two go hand in hand. I'm not sure having more muscle makes you healthy - you could be a pro cyclist and have next to no muscle, yet be one of the healthiest persons around. If you want to build muscle to look good, then that's a different story.

Just to give you my perspective here. I have similar goals to you, except I build muscle to look good and have strength (don't really care if it's healthy or not). I do want to be healthy, though - and so I do a lot of cardio; I ride my bike a lot. I've been doing this for 10yrs now and made great progress. One thing that I think is key to that progress is really enjoying what I'm doing. I love getting out on my bike and climbing big mountains. I love getting in the gym and lifting heavy weights.

I think what you should do is find the cardio exercise that you love. You said you sit on an indoor bike for an hour? Do you enjoy that? I'm sure you'd enjoy getting out in the fresh air tearing up a trail much more, no? Or, you said you were into runing in highschool - maybe you should think about giving that another shot. Exercise becomes much more enjoyable when you actually enjoy the activity and you're not just doing it 'to be healthy', or 'lose bodyfat'. It's all about enjoying the journey and not just the destination.

Hope this helps.

joop