MercyNo, I'm with you, girl! I, too, need to lose weight in order to get pregnant, and am way more motivated because of that!
However, instead of doing so much cardio, try doing weights. Do them first, and then do your cardio. Here's what my trainer has told me:
- When you lift weights, you burn the energy in your muscles. When you do cardio, your body gets energy from your muscles first, then it uses the energy in your fat. If you lift weights first, you'll use up the energy in your muscles so the cardio can only look in your fat for it. You'll burn more fat!
- Lifting weights for an hour will burn more calories over the next 12 hours (even if you sit and do nothing during that time!) than you would burn in an hour-long aerobics class!
- Lifting weights builds muscle. Muscle not only looks slimmer than fat (see the picture stickied in the Exercise forum), but unlike fat, it actually burns calories all the time, even when you are sleeping! Therefore, the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism and the more calories you burn. Good stuff!
- Your bulked up muscles can help fill in some of that loose skin, especially in the arm area. I still have loose skin right around my armpit, but the rest of my arms look really good, and not saggy at all.
Check out the Ladies Who Lift forum for lots of tips on exercises you can do with the weights.
I fell off the wagon around Thanksgiving with all the Christmas busy-ness, but am now back to my regular schedule: Weights and abs for an hour twice a week, elliptical for a half hour once a week, Jazzercise for an hour once a week and Pilates for 20 mins once a week. In two weeks my Pilates class at work starts up, and then I'll be doing Pilates for an hour each week. I love Pilates!