I don't think cardio 4-5x a week with weights 2x a week is too much. *At all*
From my own personal experience, weight-lifting makes all the difference in weight loss. Lift HEAVY. Lifting light isn't going to do anything for you in terms of weight-loss, nor is it going to give you healthy, sexxxxy muscles. Women are not genetically engineered to bulk up - it takes hours upon hours upon hours at the gym doing so, usually with the help of steroids.
I would recommend breaking up your lifting routine into a 2 or 3 day split. I used to lift upper body (arms, shoulders, back & chest) once a week and lower body (legs, butt & abs) once a week. Now I do a 3 day split - Chest, Shoulders & Back on Sunday, Lower body on Wednesday and Biceps & Triceps on Friday. I do cardio at the gym 4x a week and I swim 45min to an hour twice a week. But if I am sick one day or it doesn't fit into my schedule (although I often rearrange things to to make a workout fit), I don't worry about it because when I work out, I work HARD.
So, my advice to you is to keep up your 4-5x a week cardio and to break up your weight-lifting a bit. You don't need to lift for an entire hour each time - do supersets or take less break time in between sets. It takes me 35 min MAX to do a minimum of 7 exercises (3 sets each) each time.
As for not seeing results yet, you shouldn't be. It will take a month or two for you to see anything and even more than that for it to be really noticeable. Focus instead on how much better you feel for becoming active and how great of a stress relief it is.
And if you'd like a copy of my lifting schedule, let me know and I'll send you one. My trainer developed it and I tweak it a bit every now and then to stay fresh. Now that I think about it, it's about time for me to get a new routine...
-------------------- Elizabeth
all those years it wasn't IBS - it was celiac!
send me an email: liz@dopple.net
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