Thank you for the compliment about my classes.  I enjoy having you as a participant!  One thing you are missing is patience!  (I know, I should talk!) You want to lose 30 pounds but you only gave South Beach one month! To lose the weight the healthiest way, you should expect to lose 1-2 pounds a week.  So it should take at least four months and probably more like six or eight months to lose 30 pounds, not one month.  Since you exercise, you may also experience a shift in your weight.  As you exercise, you will gain muscle mass and lose fat mass.  This will lead to a smaller body but at the same weight. This is important - I trained with with my daughter for six months before she went to ARMY Basic Training and she lost 3 inches from her waist, 3 inches from her hips and GAINED 3 pounds!

It’s also important to understand how you are fueling your body when you exercise.  To burn fat and get the best results, you need to exercise in the aerobic zones most of the time.  Invest in a heart rate monitor and hire a personal trainer to calculate your RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) and set up your aerobic and anaerobic zones. This will help you keep track of how you are training and what your calorie burn is.

You mentioned your exercise routine but not your diet routine.  Changing your diet to lose weight needs to be a permanent lifestyle change, not a temporary change like diets often are. Since you mentioned losing and gaining weight, I suspect you lost weight and perhaps resumed old habits thus regaining the weight you lost. Many times this happens because most of us underestimate how much we eat during the day.  To lose weight, you should try to eliminate about 250 calories from your daily diet and increase your daily activity by 250 calories.  This adds up to 500 calories a day or one pound of weight loss a week.  One of the best ways to track what you eat and how much you eat is to keep a journal.  For the first week, eat as you normally would and don’t try to “be good.”  You need to see what you are really eating and what you need to change.  After the first week, try a site like www.calorieking.com to journal your diet, add up the calories and make the necessary changes.  Most women who workout at your level need to eat between 2000-2300 calories/day. A personal trainer can help you find the right amount.