Lalala - Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to echo what ennay and Mudpie have said in terms of losing weight. I'm about your height and have about the same goal weight-wise. I have to tell you that 117 is a pretty ambitious goal. It's at the low end end of an acceptable BMI (in fact, according to some sources, it's the lowest your BMI should be). It's about what I weigh right now and it's taken a lot of disclipline and a very restricted calorie level to get here. And I exercise like a mad woman--I do some form of exercise every day of the week, usually at a very high intensity, and I work out with a trainer 3 days a week. I also try to include some interval training at least a couple of days a week (right now it is just swimming and spinning because of a knee injury but eventually I hope to get back to running intervals).
That said, if you want to let go of the scale goal and focus on just your measurements and body fat %, I think you could make a lot of progress with exercise and eating healthy foods, but not counting calories. My sister started an exercise program a year ago and has dropped from a size 10 to a size 4-6. But the kicker is that she didn't really change her eating habits, so despite the fact that she fits into a much smaller size and looks
fantastic (seriously, I think she looks better than I do even though she is wearing a larger size--but that could just be my own body image issues and sibling jealously), her weight is exactly the same as when she started. But it's going to be slow going, you aren't going to see results in a month like you will if you alter your diet.
Mudpie and ennay--I have heard that those scales the supposedly tell your body fat percentage can be wildly inaccurate. I've been using the Navy method (which just uses body measurements) and it usually comes pretty close to what my trainer calculates as my body fat when he does the skin fold test. Here are a couple of websites that do the calculation for you:
BBLex,
www.he.net,
www.freedieting.com (this one seems to be less accurate because it doesn't ask for as many measurements, but it has a bunch of other cool calculators).
Susan, Oh good. I just wanted to make sure I hadn't offended.