A ? about Exercising and losing weight.

You are probably okay for now, but you will eventually hit that dreaded plateau. When that happens, up your calories a little and add some HIIT and weights. Good luck!

It's doable but sometimes you have to be flexible and readjust your goals. Life happens.

If you are really serious check out Venus Index for goal setting, the truth about calorie burn, how to navigate a social event while on a diet, and much more, along with the Anything Goes Diet. They are what helped me achieve my goals as quickly as possibly against many odds.

People mistakenly give this advice of eating up because they thought they lost weight when they ate more, but it was really just normal fluctuations. The bottom line is that if you have extra fat to lose and the TREND is not down on the scale then you need to eat less.

ONLY YOU and your doctor can decide the amount of calories to eat, not anyone here and even MFP tells you something to that effect when you login here.

I Ignore exercise calories because they are over estimated. Most people underestimate calories so give it 10% less in the total. Also packaging will underestimate because legally they can put more not less so they will error on the more side.

Your body loses weight in chunks, not linear. I have found that you can do everything right and your weight loss seems to plateau but you are patient and keep exercising and eating at a deficit (however slight) you will lose it, it will suddenly "whoosh". There are so many variables for the scale though: water retention, digestion, allergies, sodium, carbs, water intake, DOMS, inflammation, the list goes on. People mistakenly think they lose weight when they eat more because of these fluctuations.

If you have a lot of body fat reserves you would be surprised at how little you can eat (unless you have emotional eating issues or disorders). The leaner you get the less your body has to draw from and then you have to taper up your calories. There is no such thing as starvation mode for women over 12% body fat or men over 6% body fat. I am a living breathing example of that. I went from obese to now under 12% BF and I've maintained for one year and built muscle the whole time. You don't BUILD muscle in starvation mode, so I proved everyone wrong. And I learned it all from the author of the books in my previous post.

I am pretty similar to you, (started at 205 - wanted to lose at least 65 pounds total - have lost 26 in 3 months). I would say first of all not to put such a time constraint on getting healthy. It's going to take as long as it takes, so don't feel like you failed if you are only down 50 after 9 months. That's still a huge achievement, and keep it up!

If you are happy with the results you've been seeing lately, great! Stick with it! But there will probably come a time when you start noticing that the same things that worked a month or 2 ago aren't really doing as much anymore. It's important not to let your body get too comfortable and used to what you're doing to it. I would suggest mixing up your workouts a little, and adding some walking, jogging, elliptical, aerobics (workout dvd even), etc... instead of just biking most of the time. Biking is great, but you're body also needs to be challenged with new things that use different muscle groups.

I would also suggest mixing in some strength training... even if it's as simple as working with some hand weights, or getting a dvd or using Youtube to get some moves for legs and abs. Toning is really important - it can help you shed a lot of inches (even if it doesn't show on the scale, it will show in your measurements and how your clothes fit, and make you look slimmer overall), and it can also make you stronger all over so you can work even harder through your cardio sessions.

It's great that you've commited to working out 6 days a week... but instead of doing 6 days of cardio - most people seem to get better results when they alternate days of cardio and days of strength training. And if you're really sore, don't be afraid to take an extra day off to rest and let your muscles repair.. that's when you build them!

Good luck!