Anytime, anytime. Yes, you can call me whatever you want, just not Rach because that sounds like a skin disease. Rae works just fine. I've had this username for ... like ten years through Yahoo and other groups and forums online. I was going for a Boy Hits Car kinda name and I could kick boys if I wanted. No one can stop me!

Maybe you're just not working out hard enough. I'm seriously not trying to crap on what you're doing at all, don't get me wrong. I think there's some heart rate measurement you can use to know whether you're really working out hard enough to get your heart beat in the right zone or whatever where your body actually starts burning calories. There's a chart in our gym that shows a sliding scale for your age group and something else, can't remember right now. I don't know technicalities and crap, that's why there are people who know stuff on here, too. I don't monitor my heart rate because I can feel that what I'm doing is working. I'm sweating buckets (literally soaking through my shirt, front & back) and I've gotta keep pushing myself to get through my hour because my legs start getting tired about 20-25 minutes in. With all the huffing and panting, I'm sure my heart's getting a nice work out, too. My heart loves me when I exercise. Okay, sorry, now I'm just being silly. You could probably do a search on this forum for that info. If it's not all laid out for you in a single post, you might find a link. I'm sure there's something about your target heart rate here, there's gotta be. If not, there's always Google.

Keep truckin'.

in relation to the heart rate you can buy heart rate monitors from shops that to put a sensor on your chest and wear a watch on your wrist and it tells you how many beats per min your heart is doing and in the book it will tell you what you heart should be doing when your exercising

BF got me a wrist one for Christmas.

I look back at my early frustration with weight loss and it's really amazing how far I've come since then. The first month I didn't think I was ever going to lose any weight. Now (8 months later) I weigh almost 50 pounds less. I'm only 75% of the woman I used to be.

ah cool! well done on your success so far