[sysad]

Hello everyone, I came across this site while doing a search on Google and found it interesting. I have struggled with my weight for pretty much my whole life. The worst I have ever felt was in 2005 when i weighed over 400 LBS. At that point I had enough and become determined and focused and over a 6 month period dropped my weight to 270 LBS using sheer determination and discipline.

Since then I have teetered between 270-300-300-315-301-330-320, you get the picture. (its frustrating). In The winter of 2006 I was hospitalized and had to have my gall bladder removed and this is probably just a total excuse but since then it appears that I haven't been able to lose weight.

It used to be pretty easy. All I did was stop going out to eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner. i didnt step foot in a gym for the whole 6 months. I just ate better and had a positive attitude and the weight fell off. Since 2006 I've been struggling to get back into my 'groove' and I'm assuming that is never going to happen so in July I joined a gym and started seeing a personal trainer 12x a month and i've been doing that along with a pretty low calorie/low fat diet and I still cannot seem to get below 317 LBS.

This just seems somewhat surreal to me as prior I was able to lose 3-4 lbs a week by just avoiding bad food, now I am beating my ass 3x a week at 6AM plus a couple days of week on my own and all im getting is a little stronger. I realize its good to be stronger, but i'm too old to try out for the Steelers so being an 'inshape' 300+ guy is pretty worthless.

Anyway, I am 29, 320 LBS, I work out at Lifetime fitness. I have a heartrate monitor, I burn about 700 calories with my personal trainer 3x a week then about 500 on the treadmill by myself a couple times a week.

The people at the gym are pressuring me to do all of the tests (rmr/map test) but i'm not really sure that those are reputable or just marketing.

Has anyone ever hit a wall like this before? its really driving me crazy.

Thanks,
SYSAD