Songbird you sound like you're doing GREAT! Congratulations you're an inspiration.

Just a couple pointers and suggestions:

First of all, losing slow might be frustrating and if you feel like you can do without the "treats" to reach your goal you will find you lose quicker. If you want to push to lose as much as possible now before your wedding, try eating only CLEAN meats and veggies. And this can be anything from chicken to pork to beef to lamb... Ribs or wings make a great treat! But do away with any LC "junk" or that PB mousse even for now. The cleaner you eat (meaning sticking to veggies and whole unprocessed meat) the better you will find.

Also, congrats on the fitness achievements. Working out is ALWAYS good. Just be aware that you can't generally gain/tone muscle while you're losing fat (since one requires a calorie surplus while the other requires a calorie deficit... Mathematically impossible to be doing at the same time obviously). Focus your efforts on CARDIO now, and avoid lifting weights or attempting to tone/spot reduce any body parts. If you have an hour to spend at the gym, you're 100% better to spend it doing 60 minutes on the cardio machine rather than 30 minutes on the machine and then essentially wasting 30 minutes trying to gain muscle.

Good luck! And have a great wedding.

You can build muscle and lose fat. Doing cardio to lose weight first is one of the biggest gym myths that only inhibits weight loss and leaves many women with loose, saggy skin. As a woman who lifts weights, this I can vouch for. As a personal trainer, I urge you to begin light resistance training with cardio. There's also no such thing as spot reducing or "toning." You either build muscle or you don't. Misinformation about women lifting weights is one of my pet peeves and only aids in perpetuating myths about women and the gym--myths that serious female weight lifters and athletes have been fighting for YEARS.

The fastest way to lose weight and achieve muscle definition occurs while doing a combination of cardio and weight training AT THE SAME TIME in the same cycle. Waiting to begin weight training "until [I] lose more weight" is the biggest mistake one can make in a weight loss program. But hey, who am I to dispense advice? One can do a search on any women's weight lifting site, consult a personal trainer at the gym, or merely talk to other female weight lifters and athletes on this forum and find the same information I just stated.


~Amory

as a personal trainer would you say the best diet for fat loss is lc or does it matter as long as you count cal, watch fat etc...thats what i hear alot it does not matter what you do but when i go to bodybuilder.com the stories tell a different story i.e. most dont eat induction diet but do eat very little carbs, upping it say on there off time but still not your typical high carb although some do low carb high protein low fat, which is slightly different then atkins actually it isnt recomended at least not on induction....maintainance you do have to be a bit more careful.

Most serious, competitive body builders (i.e., the one that runs the gym I attend) heavily supplement using protein cycles, creatine, and cyclical ketogenic dieting. Most body builders do not worry about following a meal plan like Atkins, but more of a plan like Bill Phillips' "Body for Life." This past fall, winter, and spring I had four female clients. Each of them followed a slightly different eating plan they modified to work for themselves using basic nutrition research. All of them were successful due to consistency and sticking to their chosen way of eating, as well as following their cardio and weight-lifting plans.

Places like bodybuilder.com are catering to just that--bodybuilders. They do not eat, exercise, or have the same long term fitness goals as the majority of posters on this forum, thus the information there should be utilized with caution. Body builders can carb up and carb down with ease--sometimes gaining and losing twenty pounds within ten days--by playing with their eating plan AND they workout more than once a day. A few of my fellow gym-goers are preparing for the city StrongMan competetion and yes, they can use carbs prolifically in the "off season." However, when they train for a show they use cyclical ketogenic dieting and often lift weights two or more times per day--typically before and after work. They also play with creatine, diuretics, salt and electrolyte levels, water, tanning, oils, airbrushing, etc. Naturally, they don't care what is "recommended on induction" as you put it, which is why testimonies on bodybuilder.com tell a different story.

I missed my 23rd week weigh-in on Wednesday because I was in Maine, but I weighed myself this morning and I am down one more pound....quite the feat considering I was eating out most of the week and not paying as strict attention to labels and such!

Great going, songbird!!

Keep up the good work!