Thank you, Han! I love your response

The other girls have been dead on right about eating the right foods, but the cardio facts they cite have not worked that well for me.

In my various stages of fitness and activity over the years, I found that I had the best fat loss, the kind of fat loss that allows those pretty and strong muscles to show more easily on my frame, and the best loss of belly fat, from doing as many high intensity exercises as possible. At my fittest this was 2-3 one hour kickboxing classes a week, plus several mountain bike rides (if you only road cycle, think of mtb rides as being somewhat equivalent to doing high intensity intervals with unpredictable recovery times), plus walking to work and back about 1/2 hour every day, plus one lower intensity longer ride....it was a lot to fit in, but if I dropped anything because of time it was always the lower intensity workouts. If I weren't doing kickboxing, which has a high strength component, I would do a weight workout. Pushing your muscles does keep your metabolism high, your energy high, and burns more of those calories you eat.

Spinning on the trainer, I'd recommend working up to doing serious interval training. If you have limited time, this is also the best bang for your time....

As Han-girl said, though, if you don't love it - you won't do it. For instance, the only way that I really enjoy weights, is to use free weights, to multiple exercises at one time (i.e. walking lunges while doing shoulder raises), and changing it all the time. If it isn't complicated, I probably won't do it.... And I do hate sitting on the bike and spinning, but these days I have limited time and I'm trying to take a correspondence course. If I sit down to read the text, I fall asleep in 10 minutes, so, instead, I read while spinning. Not as intense as I like, but I do this on the recovery days from the new kickboxing classes. Works for me, because it gives me the time to do both things at once, and I don't fall asleep!!

Everyone is different. Go with what works best for you. Use the ideas we give you at your own discretion. And most of all have fun!!

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~