I've got a second meeting with my trainer tomorrow, and it will hopefully begin to focus my workouts. I see the last month or so as getting into the habit rather than actually pushing for results. So far, I've been doing cardio 5-6 times a week (when I'm in town -- last week, I only got to the gym twice), and I've been weightlifting anywhere from 3-5 days per week (started often, and have been toning it down).
I ran a mile the other night on their indoor track, and it felt wonderful. I'm definitely talking to my trainer about doing more of that type of activity. Somehow, on the elliptical, I get very numbers oriented. The somehow shouldn't even be there, because I know why: I compete against myself, and I feel like I haven't gotten a good workout if I haven't achieve XYZ goals. Even though I know the calorie counter is probably off, I often push myself to get 400 calories burned in a 30 minute workout, and I can get 260 or so in a 20 minute workout.
Lifting weights has been productive and actually fun. I like having a machine that keeps track of my weights so that I know how much I've done and how much I've improved. I wonder what I'll do when I go to grad school -- I don't want to carry around a little notebook for tracking progress, but it migh be necessary to keep me in line.
Anyway, to summarize, I like working out. It makes me feel like I'm achieving something (unlike much of the rest of my life right now, but that's another story). I'm starting to think of positive achievement goals I can set for myself, and I'm going to talk to my trainer about amping up the running so I can start training to do some races or longer runs. Baby steps, yes, and each little step is quite exciting.
an addendum: I did the math tonight using a little online tutorial about my recommended daily calories. I consider it a rough guideline and nothing to live by. Anyway, for my ideal weight of ~ 135 pounds, I should consume about 1950 calories per day to maintain. This assumes a fairly regular amount of exercise that is more than walking 2 miles per day but not intense training for anything.
In order to lose a pound of fat, one has to burn/cut 3500 calories. Since I have about 30 pounds to lose to get to 135 (tho I'm not sure if 135 is ideal -- I might find that 140 or 145 is better for me), I have a lot of work to do. So, if I can find a way to cut or burn 500 calories per day, than that's 1 pound per week and 30 weeks until goal. That's a lot of time . . . I'm hoping to be down fairly well by the end of 20 weeks. Anyway, that's the math there for posterity, and we'll see how it all goes.