Hi Scout - I just discovered your post and I see you have gotten some good advice, and I'd like to add to it. I'm short on time today so I could only quickly skim through the posts, but I wanted to try and add my comments anyway in the hopes that it might help you.

First of all, let me LOUDLY echo my consensus with the responses regarding muscle weighing more than fat. Anybody who buys into that line of garbage obviously was not paying attention in math class in elementary school. A pound is a pound is a pound. A pound of cotton balls weighs the same as a pound of iron, though, obviously, the pound of cotton balls is going to take up a lot more space. As iron is to cotton, so is muscle to fat - muscle is denser, so it takes up less space than fat. But fat is fat and muscle is muscle and one cannot be converted into the other. If you are getting larger while working out, it is because you are increasing the size of your muscles by virtue of your method of working out - as stated above - doing the types and intensities of repetitions and sets to tear down and rebuild muscle.

Although I realize a guy may want to have more muscle than a woman (I am female), with so much weight still to lose, you may want to continue concentrating on "demarbelizing" the muscle you already have - in other words, removing the fat from existing muscles - rather than worry about building up. It takes more calories to support muscles than it does to support fat (so I've heard), so you are still helping with your weight loss and you can worry about building up later when you see what your "final results" body actually looks like and where you want fine tune it.

Though I agree with much of the advice you've been given and I hate to add confusion to your stress and disappointment, I have to say I disagree with some things rather strongly, based on my own personal experience.

I have since returned to being heavy because of an unexpected lifestyle change that contributed to sedentary days and bad eating habits, among other things. But back in the early 90s, I lost 168 pounds in a year and at the end, I was in much better physical shape (including being toned and sculpted) than I had ever been in my life and I was thrilled with my new body and vitality. I was also happily shocked by the method that I used to lose weight.

Like many others, I had always been of the belief that the only way to lose weight was to greatly restrict caloric intake. Prior to that, I also bought into that mythical fear that if you worked out when you were fat, you would just become a very solid fat person. Though I had never heard the bogus myth that muscle weighs more than fat, I HAD heard the myth that "muscle gets converted into fat" and believed it. So in previous years, to lose weight, I would starve myself and NOT work out, happily watching my body get thinner and flabbier every day, knowing I would tighten up the flab in the end. I did that over and over again and couldn't understand why I always gained MORE weight each time the weight returned.

I finally joined a "Life Without Diets" program at my health club that was based on sound nutritional principles and found a better way to eat myself thin and have fun doing it.

Of course, I learned about the concept of your body going into starvation/survival mode and holding onto the fat. And this means that if you go on a low-calorie diet and lose a bunch of weight, now that your body has been programmed to survive on this much caloric intake, as soon as you go back to what you SHOULD be eating to support your body weight in the way of calories, your weight will start to creep up again.

So much to our skeptic shock, the instructor made all of us calculate the approximate caloric intake (according to the standard charts) that was needed to support a person of the height, age and weight that our bodies would need at our NORMAL weight. For most of us, this was WAY more than the 500-1200 calories that most "diets" recommended. For me, it was 1800 calories. My first thought was, geez, I'm already too big for the bathtub, and if I eat this much, I'm going to be too big for the whole bathroom! But her concept was that we needed to program our bodies to take in this required amount of calories WITHOUT gaining weight, and she promised us skeptics this was indeed possible.

Then she taught us HOW to eat. And here's where I have to STRONGLY disagree with the advice given above that the best time to workout is in the morning on an empty stomach. She taught us that the first thing we should do every morning is EAT. And if we are going to work out, we should eat a few more carbs than otherwise - like an apple or something.

We were also told to eat every 2-3 hours throughout the day - and NEVER more than 400 calories at a time because that is the approximate amount your body processes at once before it turns the excess into fat - even if it is 400 calories of lettuce. Not that we couldn't eat more if we wanted to, but if we did, it would just slow our progress, so we were forewarned.

Next, the more complex the carbs, the better because they processed more slowly and didn't have a tendency to convert to fat as quickly as simple sugars.

Next, instead of focusing strictly on calories, we focused more on grams - approx. 10-20 grams of fat (preferably the "good fats"), 60-70 grams of proteins (about the size of a deck of cards or your hand) and the rest carbs.

Since I had always been a compulsive eater all my life, I wasn't worried so much about starving as I was about not being able to eat - more specifically, to chew stuff for a long time. Knowing I would obsess over small portions and feeling deprived, I bought a large book with nutritional breakdowns and created a database for myself (I was into computer programming at the time) that calculated not only the nutritional breakdown of food, but apprxomately how many bites I would get for the caloric "buck." As a result, I ate LOTS and LOTS of leafy green veggies and cucumbers, among other things. <g>

She also said that eating a little protein with each of these little mini meals throughout the day was better than eating it all at once. Something about binding, but unfortunately I can't remember enough about it to intelligently convey it. But it made sense at the time. But the bottom line was that grazing frequently throughout the day was the best way to communicate to your body that it was okay to burn fat and it helped to keep your energy stores up.

Also, eating too many simple sugars was a surefire way to deplete your energy and make you feel tired, contributing to a possible misconception that the "diet" or your workout is wearing you out.

Another thing about working out (especially cardiovascular workouts) without having had a meal (especially overnight) - once you get into your "fat burning zone," if you don't have any ready reserves of energy, your body will burn protein - which means muscle - and it doesn't care where it gets it - your thighs, your heart, your eyes - so long as it has energy. That was enough to make me eat. <g>

Now, about those workouts. You are OVERDOING it - big time - with the weights as well as the exercise! Not the length of exercise - the pace.

I had a personal trainer the entire time I was on that big weight loss session, and we only worked out for 45 minutes twice a week. And it was always with light weights. He favored doing many reps in succession rather than sets, so I might do, for example, a 50 arm curls with no breaks - but that would be it for the arm curls. The next week I might do them in sets. He liked to vary it, but I never had a sense of "burning." The only thing he allowed me to do on a daily basis were stomach crunches (formerly called sit-ups). He taught me the correct form for four different movements and I did 100 of them each morning, 5 or 6 times a week.

He was also a real stickler for warming up and stretching. Lately, there seems to be new information that it's not necessary to stretch *before* you exercise, but back then he had me do it before and after. I warmed up for about 5 minutes on the treadmill going very slowly, then we did stretches for whatever muscles I'd be using. After the workout, I stretched again. Although I did "feel" my muscles becoming toned, in the entire year I did that, I never once felt sore - not even the first time. It was hard for me to believe it was even working at first, but after two months or so, I saw the results - and so did everyone else.

Now, for the fat burning stuff. You are WAY overdoing it in that area in the way of intensity. Slower and longer is better than shorter and faster! I think it's already been said somewhere up above that you don't burn fat for the first 20 minutes or so, and that is correct. And you can and probably should go a little faster during those first 20 minutes to give your HEART a workout - making it larger and able to take in more oxygen so you can use fuel more efficiently. But after that, you should slow it down to burn the most fat. Because of this process, I think you would do better to do your jogging *all at once* rather than break it up into two shorter sessions morning and night. And though running for the first 20 minutes is fine, I TRULY believe you will lose weight faster if after the first 20 minutes you switch to a slow jog or a fast walk rather than continue the fast pace.

And I can't remember if this was said above or not, but you don't need to worry as much about how much fat you're burning in a particular cardio session as much as how much fat you will burn for the rest of the day BECAUSE of the session. But if the workout is fun, then of course you will work longer and you WILL burn more fat than if you had done nothing.

And because of this fat burning process, and my own experience, I also disagree that it's impossible to lose more than 2 pounds per week. I don't doubt that there are health concerns if you have a steady weight loss over several months of much higher amounts, but you can definitely do better than 2 pounds of FAT at least some of the time if you're doing it correctly.

The first thing you need to do, if you haven't already done so, is to get yourself a good-quality heart monitor and wear it the entire time you are doing your cardio stuff. Next, you need to know YOUR OWN PERSONAL target heart rate and STAY THERE the entire time you are exercising. If you go above it (and I suspect you are), you are just wasting your time and wearing yourself out and setting yourself up for disappointment.

Here is the formula for your PERSONAL target heart rate (unlike the "generic" rate that is given for the general public):

1. First, find your RESTING heart rate. This will take a few days to accomplish the true number. FIRST thing in the morning, before you even lift your head off the pillow, grab a watch or clock with a second hand and take your pulse for a full minute. Over the course of three days, calculate the *average* of this number. This is your RESTING heart rate. It should go down over time as you lose weight and get into better and better shape. Generally, for overweight and out of shape people, it is pretty high. For the athletic types who have been in shape for a while, it might range from 50 to 60. Next, do the following:

1. Subtract your age from 220 to find Maximum Heart Rate.
2. Subtract resting heart rate from Maximum Heart Rate to determine Heart Rate Reserve.
3. Take 70% of Heart Rate Reserve to determine Heart Rate Increase.
4. Add Heart Rate Increase to Resting Heart Rate to find Target Heart Rate.
5. The final number is your Maximum Target Heart Rate - you don't want to go above this for any exercise (including aerobic).
6. Calculate 50% and 75% of your Maximum Target Heart Rate number. This is your Fat Burning Heart Rate RANGE. Stay in this zone to burn fat (after 20 minutes of exercise at your Maximum Target Heart Rate).

You can do fat burning exercises 6 days a week - it's wisely recommended that you give your body at least one day of rest to recuperate from all the activity. Recent research has shown that even exercising in ten-minute spurts throughout the day has benefits, but for me, psychologically, I always do better if I can do it all at once.

So then you just need to find activity that you find pleasure in, in order to keep up the pace. My favorite routines were the "natural" ones - bicycling and rollerblading. So I would toss my rollerblades into a bag and cycle up to the lakefront - and hour there and back - then rollerblade at the lakefront for an hour at least five days a week. On the weekend, I would sometimes meet friends and we'd rollerblade or cycle for hours. I never failed to wear my heart monitor and made sure I stayed within my range - which for me, meant not going over 16mph on my bike. A few times a month, I would participate in an "exercise marathon challenge" with other members of the health club. We would do a variety of routines on all the cardiovascular equipment - stationery bikes, treadmill, rower, etc. - and see how long we could last. We had plenty of water and some energy drinks to help sustain us. My record was eight hours. Which reminds me, I think it's already been said by others and I also think you're already doing it, but just in case - you just can't drink too much water, especially before and during exercise!

I also learned that using the larger muscle groups burns more fat in a given exercise. For the most part, I didn't worry about this because I enjoyed biking and rollerblading so much and felt that was enough. But if I knew I wanted to or had splurged on some highly caloric food - maybe during a celebration or a holiday - I would opt instead to go to the health club and use the rower and ski machines, which burned more calories than biking.

Since I burned fat efficiently every day, my *resting metabolic rate* was higher than it used to be when I was sedentary, thus it was no problem at all eating 2000 calories a day - much to the amazement of my friends and co-workers - and losing weight. All at a STEADY rate of about 14 pounds a month (which meant a whole dress size, sometimes two), with NO PLATEAU whatsoever. I went from a size 28 to a size 6 with a rock-hard and toned body and was quite happy with it. I also went from a 50% fat ratio to 16% and was happy with that too. And never once did I overdo it with the weights.

Another trick I learned in the class was that while your body is going through the changes of losing fat and building muscle and bone density, and since muscle is denser than fat, you could be losing inches even though you haven't lost any weight. Not because the fat "converted" to muscle, but because while say 2 pounds of fat was being burned away, you might have added 2 pounds of muscle, so the scales didn't change much that week. But there's a much better way to tell.

Most of us who have gained weight have a whole wardrobe of clothes that don't fit. At the beginning of each month, in addition to taking "all over" body measurements from head to toe, I would dig through my closet and find the latest pair of "too tight whatever" and try it on and take a picture, noting exactly how it fit or didn't fit. In addition to that, I also had a "reward system" that involved putting some coveted outfit in layaway that was a size smaller than I currently was, knowing with confidence (and inspiration) that I would eventually fit into it.

At the end of the month, BEFORE weighing myself (I only allowed myself weigh-ins once a month rather than once a week), I would try on the too-tight outfit from the month before, and it was ALWAYS loser than it was the previous month. Then I would take my measurements, happilying discovering the numbers shrinking. And only after that did I weigh myself, and usually by that point, I was psychologically empowered to not care if the scales didn't go down. Amazingly, they always did go down, but if they hadn't, as long as I was getting smaller, I didn't care. As it turns out, at the end of the weight loss session, I ended up weighing 20 pounds MORE than I weighed in high school, but wearing 2 dress sizes smaller. At that point, I finally believed the Life Without Diets instructor that weight absolutely doesn't matter as long as you have the right body composition.

After the weight-loss effort was over, I continued to work out, but relaxed a bit with what I was eating and braved eating the "bad foods," knowing that my new, speeded up metabolism could handle them in reasonable doses, and knowing that a little extra exercise and/or patience could tackle any sudden weight gains. I kept the weight off for a long time until I moved into a very stressful lifestyle situation with limited access to exercise and the "right foods," plus some nervous eating, and then I "came undone." But I hope to get re-acquainted with my svelt, sculpted self by the end of the year.

Good luck with your weight loss. Please come back and let us know if any of these tidbits of advice you've waited so patiently for have worked! You sure have a lot of bathroom reading to keep you happy for a while LOL.



[This message has been edited by HalfwayThere (edited 03-31-2003).]