Hi Sock and welcome to Maintainers!
You're talking about a subject near and dear to my heart.
I give weight training a ton of credit for me losing the weight, keeping it off, AND fitting into little clothes! And I discovered lots of unexpected benefits, like mental toughness, perserverance, and being strong, which is one of the coolest feelings in the world.
First things first - what is weight training? Weight training = weightlifting = strength training = resistance training = toning. They're all the same thing = building muscle. We build muscle by stressing the muscle, using weight. The weight can be a dumbbell, barbell, resistance band, machine at the gym, ordinary objects at home, or even body weight.
When should you start? How about yesterday?
I consider weights to be a key piece of the weight loss puzzle (the other two pieces being nutrition and cardio exercise). If you lose weight through diet alone, studies show that up to 40% of the weight you lose will be muscle, not fat. That's a bad thing because muscle is what burns calories in your body. The less muscle mass you have, the slower your metabolism is and you're forced to eat less in order to lose and maintain your weight. So it's imperative to sustain and build your muscle mass with weightlifting while you're losing weight to keep your metabolism running as high as possible.
Also, muscle takes up much less room than fat:
You can see how five pounds of muscle is about 1/3 of the size of five pounds of fat. So the more muscle you have on your body, the smaller you are.
And muscle is firm and tight, as opposed to squishy, flabby fat.
How to start? I started in a gym, but there are plenty of 3FC members who work out at home. There are also weightlifting DVDs, but I'm clueless about them -- you could check in the Fitness Videos forum for recommendations. There are stickys in the Ladies Who Lift forum about getting started with weights -- I especially recommend
Krista's site -- there's a whole "getting started" section.
At the risk of boring you to tears, I want to copy something I wrote about weights that was lost in the Great Server Crash of a few years ago. I had posted this during the weeks that disappeared forever back in 2004-2005 (I think that's when it was?) but saved it as a Word document on my computer because -- well, because it's from my heart.
Happy lifting!
Why I Love Weights
I know that this is going to sound really weird coming from a 49-year old woman, but my magic pill is weightlifting. OK, pick yourself off from the floor and stop laughing and I’ll explain what I mean.
My story is down in the Maintainers Forum and I won’t rehash most of it. When I walked into a gym for the first time in my life at age 46 and 257 pounds, I was beaten down by all my years of failing at weight loss. I never gave up trying but each failure was killing my spirit a little further. Realizing that I was beyond clueless at what to do in the gym, I was fortunate enough to meet a personal trainer who taught me everything that I know today about nutrition, cardio, and lifting weights. But the true gift that he gave me — by teaching me how to lift weights — was the knowledge that I had the strength within me to succeed at weight loss.
What’s the connection between lifting weights and losing weight (besides building muscle)? See, I always thought that I was a wimp — that I was physically and psychologically weak and weak-willed (after all, I was fat, wasn’t I?) Weightlifting showed me that I was physically strong (when you’ve been obese for most of your life, you build some strong bones and muscles by just hauling yourself around!) As I kept working in the gym, it was so cool to have baby muscles start sprouting under all the fat — I’d lie in bed at night and feel at these strange changes in my body (and it was fun to discover bones too — ribs! collarbones! hipbones!). And it’s a cliché, I know, but being strong is a very empowering feeling.
But far more important than the physical changes, weightlifting showed me that I was mentally tough and could persevere. That I could pick a goal and achieve it. That I could push myself far, far harder than I ever had imagined. That I was capable of so much more than I thought. That I could push through discomfort and even pain and end up floating high as a kite on the other side. It’s hard to put the feeling into words but it’s the best feeling in the world. And I’ll bet any of you who lift weights know exactly what I mean.
I guess the bottom line is that I learned that the power to change my life lies within me. I had the strength to do what it took to lose the weight all along, though I didn’t realize it. Most of weight loss is head stuff, not the nuts and bolts of what to eat etc. You have to believe that you can do it — that you're the one making the decisions and choices. Weightlifting has shown me that I don’t have to take the easy road that most of the world does — it’s so much more rewarding to be physically and mentally strong.