just in need of a little help
 

50 lbs in a year is very acheivable. That would be just under 1 pound a week. 2 pounds a week is considered a healthy rate. Since a pound of body weight equates to approximately 3500 calories you will need to have a calorie deficit of about 500 calories a day. Whether you acheive the deficit through excercise or diet or a combination of both is up to you. I would encourage you to visit Bodybuilding.com and search for exercise routines beginners. I will also encourage you to incorporate weight/resistance training in your routine. Cardio is great for burning calories but it also tends to reduce muscle mass. Since your muscles are what burn the calories you eat you need to preserve and even build on your current base or you may find yourself having to consume less and less calories to continue your weight loss. Get your diet right! Read about balancing your fat, carbohydrate and protein intake making sure you get enough protein. There is a lot to learn. But also alot of help and information. Good luck.

Yes, I think 50 is totally possible. Keep in mind the first 6-8 weeks will feel brutal. Well at least they did to me. It's all about habits, and forming good habits takes willpower, consistency and dedication.

As for the exercise I don't have any clue as to your physical condition, but 1.5 at a time sounds like a lot if you're out of shape, but about right if you are in decent shape. You don't want to get to the gym and "phone-it-in", if you know what I'm saying. Getting your heart rate up is all about getting the burn on, when your heart rate is up you burn more calories. It's also a really good workout for your heart (which is after all a muscle), at 20 "heart health" probably not on your radar for concern, but at my age you start to worry a little more about these things... Personally I do a lot of cardio, an hour/day 6 days/week, since I'm female I'm not really interested in big bulky muscle, I'm interested in weight loss so I need to burn a lot of calories. It all depends on what you're after. Core strengthening is also pretty critical for people trying to lose weight, so you want to make sure you're getting in a good weight lifting/strengthening workout at least once a week, twice even better.

weight/resistance training
 

These terms refer to free weights and what are commonly known as Nautilus machines. Free weights are always better, as far as results and weight loss go. Use the trainers. !.5 hours is too long. Start small, mile walk on treadmill, light weights. New Rules of lifting book has some great workouts to try.

some great advice above. I'll add 2 little things:

1. Get some exercise daily, even if it's just a long walk. This (IMO) is important when you are first starting out to get in the habit of moving.

2. Fast food DOES NOT EXIST. Nor does soda.

3. If you don't already, learn to cook for yourself. Then you know what is in your food.

Good luck!

I'll second this, and add that there's also a New Rules of Lifting for Women. Free weights are preferable to resistance machines, but you can use the machines to build up a base level of strength. The important thing is that if you choose to go this route you literally have to use every machine. With free movements, you naturally use multiple muscles at a time to achieve a lift.

I'm also going to suggest something that's completely antithetical to what's written in Health or Prevention: lift heavy. Once you are comfortable with free weights, pick a weight that you can only lift 5 times - that is, if you try to lift it a 6th time, you just can't do it physically (in other words, no pink dumbbells). Do 3-5 sets of 5 reps; this will help you build strength while keeping your muscles relatively tight and close to your body, i.e., not "bulky." Do this for 3-5 movements ("lifts") every other time you're at the gym.

Building strength not only will help you burn way more calories than using a light weight with high reps, but it will also help your confidence and self-image. Muscle only really grows one way, so if your friends (not you, since you'll always view yourself through your own perspective; it happens to all of us) think you're becoming too muscular you can back off to a lighter weight and your muscles will back off appropriately.

Ideally, this won't take more than 45 minutes. Then you can have your cardio for another 30 minutes, and set aside 15 minutes for stretching sometime after lifting - this will help with recovery and soreness.

Hope you're having a wonderful long weekend :)

hey there aylala,

you'll burn calories with any activity even if you don't reach your target heart rate. the trick is to want to keep doing an activity and to try and not get burned out.

I'm not sure what the target heart rate really means--I thought it might be more of a heart health goal--but I really don't know.

If you put lots of energy and get super sweaty you'll likely be burning more calories and be near your target heart rate, but smaller activities also do a whole lot of good---like the walking that you mentioned.

Keep up the momentum! It sounds like you are off to a great start.

hi ayalala,
I'm not sure how if the amount of sweat correlates to being in shape or not. My roommie is a marathon runner and is a ridiculously sweaty person. It might just be genes! My dad told me the more you sweat the better in shape you are...but I think he might have just made that up to make himself feel better for being the sweaty type! :)

anyways, bring on the sweat :D

If it makes you feel any better I also have sweat POURING off of me at the gym.

I'm doing the couch 2 5k program which is an interval walk/jog program that gets my heart pounding and sweat pouring all over the place.

Sweat is good! (I might not be a fan of it, but at the gym its a good thing!)

target heart rate- Important! there are the guidelines on the machines that are loosely used to help you maintain your target. you burn more fat the better you keep your heart rate in healthy fat burning range for your age. the higher your heart the better chance you are just giving your heart and lungs a run for their money and possibly some damage.

run or jog comfortably... make it so that you can give 2 or 3 word replies easily but not a full fledge conversation... keep going for 3 or 4 minutes. can you keep that pace? if so.. check your heart rate. that is a good measure of a target heart rate... does it match up somewhere on the little chart?
it should be close within the range but if not-- that is okay. the chart is for reference only. my heart rate runs high when I run according to the graph but I am comfortable at my speed and can maintain for long periods of time.

I hate to grill another sacred cow here but the "fat-burning heart rate" range you see on machines is largely a gimmick invented by equipment manufacturers. Whether you burn more fat or carbs is dependent on your activity level, and is a completely different measure from the proportion of calories burned as fat.

When you're at rest, the majority of calories are burned as fat, around 90%. Conversely, at a full sprint you churn through your glycogen reserves, or mostly carbs. Still, at higher activity levels, you're burning a greater number of total calories, so more movement is always better for fat loss.

For example, at rest, you burn about 10kcal/hr. 9kcal is fat, or about 1g of fat. At a brisk walk/jog, you might burn 200kcal/hr, but the balance may have switched to 60% fat, for 120kcal or about 13g fat/hr. A high-intensity hill run through the wilderness or bouldering a large rock face may take you up to 1000kcal/hr, but even if at this point you're only burning 20% fat to 80% carbs, you still burn 200kcal or 22g fat/hr. More is still better. :)

I agree that for the most part the "target heart rate" in terms of what kind of burn you get is a fad that's come and gone. My understanding is that the current thinking focuses on interval training (heart rate goes up, then recovers, up, then recovers) is better than steady state, though I try to get two workouts of each intervals and endurance (steady heart rate at about 85% of max) during the week.

I'm in pretty good shape and I always sweat a lot. I think its just an induvidual thing.

I once went running with some friends and we bumped into one of their husbands. He asked me if I had gone into the creek because my hair was all wet!

I've just had to learn over the years to always wear hat or head covering to keep the sweat from my eyes. In the winter the hair coming out from under my hat freezes into icicles. Working out inside, I sweat more than outside. Sometimes I even wear those silly tennis bracelet things to wipe the sweat off.

Keep up the good work.