As Laura said, a good weights program is the way to go, it will tone you and up your metabolism to help with your weight loss. 

My gym instructor benches about the same weight I do.  I am 5'11", 275lb guy, my gym instructor is female, about 5'5", 100 lbs and I can hardly see any muscle on her, although she looks very toned, not skinny, but boy is she strong!

Also, for those on a budget, no gym membership and no proper free weights, you can actually use many things to give you the weights you need. 

• Put something heavy in 2 plastic bags for your dumbells. 
• Use 375ml pet bottles (or even 250ml) full of water for hand weights.
• Wrap some uncooked rice in glad wrap, put it in a long sock to wrap around your ankles or wrists for ankle/wrist weights. 
• Got an old broom?  Get rid of the end bit and keep the rod, tie weighted plastic bags to each end for a barbell (maybe a couple of nails near each end, sticking out, to keep the bags in place)

Those are just a few ideas, so use some imagination, and you can come up with a lot of alternatives to the regular stuff!

You absolutely do not need to spend a lot of money to work out at home. You can fill plastic milk cartons with water. You can use canned food. You can use two steps at home or the bleachers at the local high school to lift yourself up and back down. You can do push ups: using your body for resistance is weight training. There are a world of cheap options.

Original Post by heatherx33:

There are plenty ways you can go about your body.

Scales. Measurements. Sizes. Body fat percent, or hip to waist ratio. Who is to say what is the wrong or right way?

Body-fat percentage will tell you if you are getting fitter. If you are working out, measurements can also indicate that you are replacing fat with muscle: if you are losing inches but not seeing a lot of movement on the scale, for example (though a woman is lucky if she adds a pound of muscle in a month, typically). But if you aren't gaining, or at the very least maintaining, muscle, the fact that you are getting smaller or dropping sizes in no way indicates that you are fit and healthy. It just means you have lost weight. The same is true of the scale.

Yeah what can I lift that is 10, 15 pounds for each arm? Nothing?

I am only able to get to the gym about one a week because of the way my husband works. (I have kids and the gym has no childcare.) On my weight lifting days at home I do 50-100 squats, lunges, push ups, crunches. There are so many more. Check out that website, I plan to as well. But just wanted to let ya know that in 2 weks I can already tell a huge difference in my body composition. Also check out www.fitnessmagazine.com

Heather i don't want to sound bad but it sounds to me like your looking for excuses not to do it.

There are loads of ways of keeping fit without expensive gym memberships body weight exercises are great lunges, crunchs squats are all free ... pack your school bag with a few books and hold it while squatting cheap and easy.

And if you do find all that very tedious you can buy cheap sets of weights ... well at least you can in britan and i don't imagine its harder in any other country.

I bought my husband i lovely set of adjustable dumbbells very reasonably all you do as add the extra wieghts to each side as your strength grows .. the basic pack cost me less than a pair of jeans and you can buy additional wieghts for it seperately, but tbh i doubt i'll ever need more than the basic pack as it can provide two 30kg dumbbells and i doubt ill ever need to lift more than that.

Save up alittle each week, you say you have a job ... just switch one thing you buy with that money to savings get a jar ... pop the money in there alitte at a time .. do body wieght / tins / bags etc while you save, a small set of adjustable dumbbells is cheaper than you think.

Original Post by heatherx33:

Yeah what can I lift that is 10, 15 pounds for each arm? Nothing?

Did you even bother looking at the site or any suggestions given in this thread?

may i suggest doing Pilates for an hour a day. you can tone and lengthen muscles and lose weight. my clothes fit better, i feel stronger and have better posture. you won't "bulk up" like weight training which causes your scale to go up because muscle does weigh more than fat. it's deceiving. but you do burn more cal's at rest when you increase muscle mass. good luck

Yeah I did.

I just know that IF you lift you should lift HEAVY and go to the last rep on each one and need to up your weights each time so why do it if I wont be able to do that? Thats what I mean, but I think I found some on craigslist. 

Oh know I dont have a job, I am in college and no money at all but I think that I can get some cheap ones from craigslist.

Thanks :]

Original Post by balehead77:

may i suggest doing Pilates for an hour a day. you can tone and lengthen muscles and lose weight. my clothes fit better, i feel stronger and have better posture. you won't "bulk up" like weight training which causes your scale to go up because muscle does weigh more than fat. it's deceiving. but you do burn more cal's at rest when you increase muscle mass. good luck

 You are going to make spiro mad with this. Please, tell us how you "lengthen" your muscles? Did you detach them from your bones, stretch them, and reattach them further out?

The reason you don't "bulk up" (which weight training won't do either for women, unless you are quite an unusual female) from pilates is that it isn't weight training. It's fine for what it is, and has many benefits, but it is NOT a replacement for weight training.

Please dont take what Im about to say the wrong way, it's meant very kind heartedly & constructive. Your new profile pic is damn HOTT but the skin hanging is prime example of what everyone was trying to say regarding work outs and being a "skinny fat person." I am just like you so it's def not personal. PPl look at me with clothes on all the time and say "why are you dieting", "why do you work out so much", "you don't need to lose weight." Although the compliments are nice I'm thinking 'girl, if I took my clothes off right now you'd run scared.' Lol. So ultimately you have to decide who you are doing this for because the weight loss without exercise is temporary and WILL come back. Besides muscle burns fat and you get to eat a whole lot more once you put the muscle on. I'm saying all of this out of well wishes for you. You are young and I wish I knew these things at your age. You look great though. I'd throw the scale in the trash can and just eat healthy and work out. Besides I don't think you need to lose weight.

I may have to give up my gym membership too but I sometimes think I get a better work out at home anyway.

...and OH, I think I'm going to have to argue the point that you can't lose weight and build muscle at the same time. I'm doing it right now. Granted my weight loss has been slower than others, it's still a loss.

I've actually talked to a few people about this including my brother who is a certified personal trainer. He says that the muscle building will actually do a lot more for you. For people, like myself, who want to lose weight and build muscle at the same time, the weight training will be very beneficial. While youre not working out, the muscle building will burn fat as you are resting. it also increases you metabolism.   My goal is 300lbs to 225, but toned over a 12 month period.  Read below.

    "Contrary to what many people think, strength training is as important, maybe more important to successful fat loss than aerobic exercise. The reason lies in the amount of calories that are burned when you aren't exercising. Depending on the intensity and your weight, an aerobic workout (walking, cycling, stair stepping) will burn approximately 300 calories per hour. If the exercise is strenuous enough (which is unlikely in the beginning exerciser) the RMR will be elevated temporarily up to a few hours afterwards. Compare this to strength training which elevates the RMR permanently. The RMR accounts for 60 to 75 percent of your daily calorie expenditure, so even a modest increase will help burn off more fat.

One study (Campbell 1994) found that a three-month basic strength-training program resulted in the subjects gaining three pound of muscle and losing four pounds of fat, while eating 370 more calories per day (a 15 percent calorie increase). Remember, aerobic exercise generally doesn't increase muscle tissue. In fact, excessive amount of aerobic exercise combined with a low-calorie diet can cause the loss of some muscle tissue. This is not to say that overweight individuals shouldn't do aerobic exercise--it offers many health benefits and is a part of a weight loss program. It's just that aerobic exercise by itself may not be the best solution for permanent weight (fat) loss.

Don't think that you need to workout in a gym for two hours to strength train. Significant gains can be made with a consistent 30-minute workout performed 2 -3 times per week.  "

The importance of weight training transcends muscle's ability to burn calories when you are at rest. It helps ensure long-term health by replacing the muscle mass and bone mass you lose naturally as you age. It is therefore a very useful tool in combating osteoporosis, and it can also protect you from the damage caused by falling when the cells in your inner ear that regulate balance start to die as you age.

There are a world of reasons that muscle is critical to health and true fitness. But yes, absolutely, you can eat more if you have muscle. I eat 3,000 calories a day, sometimes more, and am 111 lbs.

I want to know how you got to lose like 15 pounds though?

Original Post by heatherx33:

I want to know how you got to lose like 15 pounds though?

I lost 18 lbs. eating between 2,500 and 3,000 calories a day. I maintain at around 3,500, so I'm still losing now.

I can't really explain how I can eat as much as I do given that I am 5' 3 1/2" and weigh very little. I attribute it to muscle, because my metabolism was not unnaturally high as a teenager. And I also work out all the time, including all the while I was losing.

As to why I lost while working out, you can lose weight while lifting weights. Yes, many people, when they start out, actually put on some. But that is because beginners can gain muscle at the same time that they are losing fat. (It is also due to the body retaining water as muscles heal, but that is not germane to this discussion.) Anyone who is not new to exercise, however, generally will not build muscle while restricting calories. This is because calories are required to build muscle. Most experienced lifters can only maintain muscle through exercise when eating less.

When you are first starting to build muscle, on the other hand, your body doesn't have to work all that hard to see changes. It is starting from zero, as it were. So that is why beginners sometimes gain muscle—and thus weight—during calorie restriction.

Not all beginners will gain weight, however. Since even beginners cannot pack on the muscle but they can lose fat, some may notice that they are losing weight more slowly than they anticipated, but they may not see a gain at all. And if they do, it may be temporary water weight, as I mentioned above.

Original Post by odie03:

...and OH, I think I'm going to have to argue the point that you can't lose weight and build muscle at the same time. I'm doing it right now.

You are right. See my comment directly above.

I am now older, but before I had kids and was your age, I worked out with weights and exercised very seriously from about 17 until 21.

Here are a few things I'd like to note from your original post:

1) If you want to lost 10-lb, forget the 10-lb goal mentally (the reason behind this is because your weight may fluctuate a little when you begin weight training)

2) With weight training, you do not want your food to be at too high of a deficit trying to lose weight, because you need to feed your muscles (not technical wording, I'm no trainer, but that's the way I think of it)

3) If you want to weight train for toning, you do not need to increase weights to a higher level, increasing reps and sets of reps using smaller weights will help tone (I wanted to be a body-builder back then so I increased weights always doing 3 sets of 10)  Instead, you may start with 3 sets of 10 reps and move up to 3 sets of 15 reps, then 3 sets of 20 reps, or add more sets.

4) By doing these toning exercises with weights, you may not lose weight at first, but you may notice your clothes fitting more loosely...this is that thought behind training where you are gaining muscle definition but losing fat so your body is more fit, but your body actually looks better and is more tone and you weigh exactly the same (which is why I said to put the weight lose goal mentally away if you plan to do this...weight is just a number)

I went through this which is why I'm telling you this.  Back then, I looked thinner and more in shape at 127 lbs than at 123 lb (I was flabbier, more fat, at the lower weight).

I hope this helps answer your question.  I also did cardio back then, so it was a combo of both. 

~Ree~

Okay.

Petite_Powerhouse.

How long did it take you to gain muscle, and to be able to eat that much a day? How much body fat do you have? I wish you had a picture because I dont want to look to muscular. 

I think I want to be 113 pounds of MUSCLE :]

Anything is possible :]

Weight training will not MAKE you do anything.  If you lift weights and have a calorie deficit you'll lose weight, if you lift weights and have a calorie surplus you'll gain weight.

Weight training influenced my measurements (waist/hips became smaller, etc), but I haven't lost any weight while weight training. Then again, I'm not trying to lose weight, just toning up. You have to remember that size ultimately matters more than "weight". Unless you have a significant amount of weight to lose, weight training should primarily be used for toning. If you're also trying to lose a significant amount of weight, do weight training to build muscle, but also add cardio to burn cals.