Hello everyone! I'm Jenn, 5'2 currently 142 LBS.

My goal is to get back down to 120 but I'm having such a hard time. My eating habits at work are fine, it's when I get home is when the trouble sets in. I try to go to the gym everyday, but I'm beat when I get home. I sit in traffic 4 hours a day for 26 miles to and from work. I have to be out the door by 5:30 to be at work by 8am. So you can imagine how tired I am by the time i get home at 6:30. I'm looking for some ideas on how I can burn fat fast. I'm using an eliptical type machine at the gym and setting it to weight loss, I enter my weight and age, and it puts be at 25 mins with a 5 min cool down. My resistance goes from 1 to 8 every 4 mins. Is that a good way to start off? Anyone have any good meal plans, that are easy to maintain and cost friendly?

It sounds like you might want to read Steve's thread on the basic lifts (lifts for women isn't a bad thing!). Your cardio sounds fine actually, interval training is great and HIIT is even better (High intensity interval training). What is your current diet like right now? Its easy to help someone tweak their current plan than to write up an entirely new one :-D

Also, this might be frowned upon, but I had the same issues of tiredness too. I did some research and found a few people pointed to CoQ10, it is an enzyme found in the mitochondria ("power house of the cell", basically this is the molecule that creates ATP from glycogen). I started using it about three weeks ago and feel that the results are really paying off for me. Its not to say I am not tired after a good workout, but I find that I am more inclined to be awake hours after it. YMMV and I suggest you google it and make your own judgements.

Good luck on everything.

My eating habits aren't the best, but they're not bad either. I usually have fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Ocasionally I'll have a protien shake and fruit or sometimes a granola bar and thats it. Lunch is usually left overs from dinner the night before (home cooking is my weakness, its so good,and i dont want to be rude and not eat it, ya know) i snack on little things throughout the day, more fruit, maybe some tuna, crackers, 100 calorie snack packs. Dinner is my biggest downfall. I have a real hard time giving myself the right portions. For dessert, I'll have a push up with is only about 60 calories, or a piece of fruit. I love my fruit. I also be sure to have some kind of veggie for dinner. The only veg i dont like is broccoli. ICK!! I do have my occasional fall backs during that time of the month, and i cave into my cravings for fast food and chocolate =(.

My work out at the gym consists of about 1/2 hour on an eliptical machine which is set for 'weight loss', then i make my rounds to the weights and work on either legs/back or arms/chest. I alternate. I always do 4 sets of 10 reps each. I squeeze in some ab work as well. Then i get back to the cardio. Either the eliptical or teadmill. Ive been eyeballing the stair climber but im afraid ill pass out on that thing hahahahahaa.

Oh, I can't go to the gym for a couple of weeks because i lost a toenail on my left foot =(....when its all better this is my plan:

Morning (6am) - protien shake
lunch time Noon) - protien shake with fruit
snack - something small, possibly more fruit
dinner- cut back on portions and eat more protien and less carbs

hopefull that works

Hey your cardio sounds good! Usually it's easier to change your diet slightly, easing into things. That way you don't feel so deprived and end up not sticking with it. Just make little changes here and there and once you get used to them, change something else. You can change things like portion sizes, adding a little more veggies or fruits, cutting back on sweets a little more...you get the idea. I also had the same energy problem, but I started taking my One A Day vitamins regularly and I also started taking some store brand B-Complex plus C vitamins. They help your body turn food into energy a little more efficiently. Hope this helped some!

Well, my bf may be one of the new personal trainers at the gym we both work out at. So hopefully that will help. I've also started this slim fast program, but I'm not following it like it tells me to. It's too expensive hahahahahaa. I have one of the breakfast bars in the morning, that holds me over till lunch, then something light for lunch or a protien shake, then one of the slimfast snack bars around 3 or so, then a light dinner at 6:30 or so and nothing after that. I also drink a crap load of water, but thats nothing different. That's pretty much all I drink. No soda, No alcohol....well, occasionaly some juice. My bf is "stacking" with some BSN product. He just recently bought the Atro-Phex, so I think I'm going to give that a try, which means new diet plan hahahahahahahahaa. I hope that works!

pretty, can I ask why you are trying "diets" instead of healthy eating? unless you plan on drinking slim fast for the rest of your life it may be pretty difficult to keep the weight off after you have reached your goal.

I can sympathize with the no time for exercise and not wanting to exercise after getting home from work. i just bought a big screen tv and an xbox 360 (bad idea) and now all I wanna do is grab some chips and play halo all night. However I am recently getting married and need to fit in a dress my mom wore for her wedding. She is a size 12 and me i'm an 18. I have a backup dress but I love hers. I have been busting my butt every night to get in shape and fit into this dress and the best advice I can give since I had 5 months to do this is...keep it simple. I do leg exercises at work while I sit on the phone. I take stairs and after I get home I run a quick lap around the block. I eat less than 1200 calories a day. Eating less and being more aware of what I was eating helped so significantly. I was easily putting 2000+ calories in my mouth everynight. I have one more dress size to go before I am at my goal, and my wedding is still 8 weeks away. I believe that beliveing you can do something and setting your mind to it is half the battle. The other half is easy after you decide to change. Everything in moderation. Including exercise and find something you like to do, It really helps!

Wow, that's quite a commute you have there. I understand not wanting to take the extra time to go to the gym, so why not get a few exercise DVDs you can do at home? I know that you're tired and would rather relax, but fitting exercise in and making it a habit gives you the extra energy to make it through the day. My life has changed drastically since I made it a habit to exercise every day. I work full-time, and I'm also a full-time undergraduate commuter. That half hour to an hour I squeeze in of exercise really helps improve my stress levels and puts everything into perspective. I tackle it and move onto the next obstacle.

Best of luck on achieving your goals. There are many inspirational and knowledgeable individuals here.