I have lost 27 pounds since surgery, but have decided to start exercising.

I read all these posts and think that I'm not doing enough.

I'm 278 pounds and have not worked out in over 3 years.

Right now my plan is to do cardio for 30 min 3x a week. Then the other 3 days I will do 20 min of cardio plus weights and crunches. This leaves me with one day off.

Should I do more? I read all your posts about running and stuff and I just don't know if I could do that.

What do you think?

Well, of course you cant just start out that way!

What you are doing sounds like a GREAT plan to ease yourself back into fitness. All you need to do is make sure you're honest with the effort you put into it - it should hurt just a little bit. It shouldnt be easy. You want red faced, sweating and pounding heart but you dont want to be ridiculous about it. If you can get your heart rate consistently around the 140 bpm level without dying - that should be fairly OK for most woment between 30 and 50 going by the standard 220 - age formula, that will be fairly hard, harder than the old fashioned debunked fat burning zone stuff, but not so hard you wont be able to work out for 7 days.

First off, work on getting used to that, then increasing your time, just 15 extra minutes to 45 will make a really big difference. Then work on intensity a bit - as you get fit, your heart rate will drop, make sure you keep it up there, and some days do harder sessions, and some days do recovery sessions.

It does work over time. A recovery session for me now is a jog rather than a run, i really enjoy going out to jog for 10kms, its not hard and it doesnt tire me out. But it took me probably 2 years to get there. And a day where I do nothing, I might actually walk 8kms, that doesnt even register on my scale as exercise any more lol.

Dont let others' achievements intimidate you, everyone has to start somewhere and ALL it takes, honestly, is commitment and consistency.

Right now my plan is to do cardio for 30 min 3x a week. Then the other 3 days I will do 20 min of cardio plus weights and crunches. This leaves me with one day off.

That's way more than I started with. And now I'm training for a Half-Ironman Triathlon!

I think you need to start slow and build up. My program recommends 4 days a week, 2 of cardio and 2 of strength for about 45 min to start.

Lots of people start out very gung-ho and then they burn out and quit. I think it's better to start slow and build up so that you aren't dying the first week and don't want to go back.

Okie dokie - I have a question...

I was banded in March of this year and almost 4 weeks ago now I started with a personal trainer 3 x a week. A week after I started with the trainer I joined the gym and so the last couple of weeks I've exercised 5 times a week (Mon to Fri). I've noticed though that my weight loss the last couple of weeks is less than what it was before I started exercising and I've had two fills since then and so am eating less, and eating better - After all the Fluid and mushy food stages passed, I knew that the weight loss was going to slow quite a bit and it has been a steady 1 kilo (2.2lbs) a week, over the last two weeks with intense exercise it's been 1.5 kilos in total - am I doing something wrong? Any suggestions would be great!!