Working out but not losing weight?

As I'm eating my healthy salad with tuna and homemade dressing for lunch, I got to thinking about a question someone asked me during boot camp last night. The question was, "How long did it take for you to start seeing results?" When I answered, "Pretty much right away," she looked kind of sad and said that she had not seen any real results after a couple of weeks of coming to boot camp. When I asked about her eating, she said it had not been optimum. When I told her that her diet was probably the reason, she mentioned that our trainer told her the same thing.

I can truly attest to this. I worked really hard with the "drop a dress size" diet plan and lost almost 24 pounds in 8 weeks. When that challenge was over, I went right back to eating like an idiot... in fact, probably worse. What happened? I gained TEN POUNDS in just a few weeks!

What's wrong with this picture?

I'm back on my program now, and since a friend is keeping my scale to help me with my issues (I weigh myself too much), I'm not sure exactly how much weight I've lost, but I'm probably down 5 or 6 pounds in 10 days.

I promise you I could lose a ton of weight just watching my diet, but it's EXTREMELY hard to lose weight with exercise alone.

Don't get me wrong... working out is important, too! We want to be strong and toned, AND adding muscle to our bodies makes us burn more calories--BONUS! However, food is truly the key to weight loss (or gain).

I hope you will learn from MY mistakes and make your eating program your priority. Next time you go to reach for a cookie or glazed doughnut (see photo), think about how many burpees you'd have to do to compensate!

And remember... Work hard and be patient... it's worth the weight!