3rd month Heavy Lifting/Cardio results (Pics)

Can you tell me what is heavy lifting? Does it work for people like me thats trying to loose alot of weight (75-100lbs) at the same time tone up?

Heavy lifting is all about what is a challenging weight FOR YOU. Personally, I use that Stronglifts 5x5 program I mentioned up there. I do three different moves each day I go to the gym. They are compound movements, which means they use a lot of muscles at once, so they're more effective in terms of a total body workout than isolation moves (like curls.) My workout looks like this:

Day 1: Squats 5 sets of 5 reps; Bench press 5 sets of 5 reps; Pendlay Rows 5 sets of 5 reps
Day 2: Squats 5 sets of 5 reps; Overheard Press 5 sets of 5 reps; Dead-lifts 1 set of 5 reps

I just alternate between those two, with a day break between each.

You can look at the links I posted to see full explanations of the movements, and youtube is good to see what they look like.
When I first started I used just the Olympic bar, which weighs 45 lbs, for most of the exercises. That was heavy enough for me. I added on 2.5 lbs to each side of the bar each day I went to the gym. The goal with heavy lifting is to keep progressing with weight to gain strength, which challenges your muscles and leads to fat burn. It's important that you lift heavier, but not too heavy that you hurt yourself. Sometimes I stay at the same weight for a couple sessions until it's more comfortable before I add on another 2.5 lbs.

The best part about heavy lifting is that it will help you keep more of your muscle and it makes your body focus on burning fat. You will lose weight the same as if you do cardio, BUT with heavy lifting most of the weight you lose will be fat, which is what you want. That way when you lose weight you will still have most of the muscle you started with and you will look much toner than if you only do cardio. (With cardio you lose both fat and muscle, so you can end up with more loose skin.)

It doesn't matter if you have 5 lbs to lose, or 300 lbs. Strength training will help you keep your muscles AND burn more fat so you will LOOK better(tone) once you reach your goal. =]

Thank you all for the support! I hope all the info will be useful to those who've been wondering about incorporating strength training. These forums are so full of information if you know where to look. I'll continue posting what I learn. It's still very new to me, so I'm just trying to keep good track of everything so I can learn what works best for me. MFP is such a great place for inspiration and motivation and I'm getting so much from the people here.

You look absolutely fantastic! Look how great you look.... It's truly amazing how the body can be transformed. I really need to change my workouts. I gain muscle pretty easily for a female, I guess that's good, so I know if I really focused on that and eased up a bit on my cardio, I would probably have similar results.... I wish I we brave enough to post some before, during and eventually after photos... But....

Thank you! I felt the same way about posting though! That's why I didn't post any until I was a couple months in, haha. Seeing results of other women lifting was the whole reason I started, so I figured the least I could do was post my results so that maybe someone else could step out of their comfort zone as well. I consider it my good deed for the day.