So for the past 11 months or so, I have focused more on weight training to burn fat rather than doing cardio. I am still doing cardio each week but only about an hour for the week. Obviously I am not getting the fat off as fast as I would like to so now I am going to be upping my cardio. I am going to shoot for at least 45 minutes of cardio a day. I will be primarily spinning or doing the elliptical trainer since both of these give me a great workout without added stress on my knees.
I've been following Bethenny's Naturally thin eating plan but the weight has not been dropping off. Along with Bethenny's eating plan I choose foods from the flat belly diet as my first choice of foods. Essentially I am following a low carb diet with healthy heart fats. I have been sitting at 200 lbs for a week now. Oh sure it reflects a .06 or .02 loss or gain every other day but for some reason its not letting me get below 200. Its really frustrating. So I was curious as to how many calories I am consuming following Bethenny's eating plan and yesterday I ate 1,440 calories and on Tuesday I consumed 1,540 calories. as far as exercise goes, on Tuesday I did 12 minutes of the elliptical for 130 calories burned and then I did about 40 minutes of weight training. Yesterday, I did 101 calories on the elliptical and 704 on the spinning bike. Since I am working out so much and eating below my calories count which should be 1,608 I am surprised to see the weight is still sticking around. I should have dropped at least 1 pound. 
The other thing is I know I have really cut back on my carbs. Since Bethenny's plan recommends eating the opposite of what you ate at a previous meal, i.e. I ate a slice of whole gran toast with peanut butter for breakfast then my next meal should not contain a whole grain (carb serving) but should be made up of veggies, fruit and a protein if I wish. And over the course of the past week I have noticed that I almost always for-go consuming breads, pastas or whole grains. i usually have 1 serving a day and the rest of my day has fruits, veggies, protein and a daily indulgence of a sweet like dark chocolate.
Grr! Its so damn frustrating! I do not want to resort to having to think about my calories and slip back into diet/calorie obsession again. I want to stick to Bethenny's eating plan but I know if I ask for advice on bodybuilding.com, they will want to know the very details about the calories I am consuming.
Hopefully I see some changes in the morning.
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I would do some light circuit training instead of the 45 minute elliptical.. If you can do proper squats it won’t put too much stress on your knees and is a great exercise for boosting fat-burning hormones. Since you have my email now, I can send you some workouts if you want. If not, just focus on high-intensity circuits and the fat will fly off. You’ll gain some lean muscle in the process too. And you should consume pastas, pizza, etc. every 5 days to keep your leptin level high.. eat anything you want on a cheat day, and the next day, consider it a deficit day where you make a huge calorie deficit by not eating as much, and on the deficit day you should do those circuits to burn fat even further… then back to normal the next day.. on the cheat days work for muscle mass and you’ll feel great.