Jillian Michaels says about losing more then a pound a week.

Thanks for posting this, but I have to respond in a somewhat negative way. . .
Jillian Michaels is a puzzle to me. On the one hand, I use (and love) her workout DVDs, on the other, every time I read something like this she's written, I'm left scratching my head.

She's saying here that she believes too much "resistance training" will resule in "damaging your muscles" and "impeding your results." Yet, her "30 day shred DVD" involves doing a fairly rigorous circuit involving plenty of resistance every day for 30 days.

Also, she's saying her BMR is 1600 "without exercise". But, your BMR is your calorie burn without any ACTIVITY at all, no walking to the bathroom, no washing the dishes, no nothing. . .so she's actually creating a much larger calorie deficit than what she's prescribing, and promoting the incorrect idea that your BMR and your "maintenance calories" are the same thing.

Also, in the same paragraph, she seems to imply that it's just "math" and that someone of her size could lose 3.5 pounds in a week (damn near impossible, even at starvation diet 1200 calories a day.) In fact, the more I read that paragraph, the less sense it makes "speeding up your base metabolism, etc."

This woman is making what I imagine to be a LOT of money giving fitness advice, and some of it seems a bit questionable, IMHO.

Sorry, don't mean to seem like I was attacking your post, but it's just seems to be full of some misleading info.

When she says you can only do so much strength training without damaging your muscles, I believe she means that you can't lift weights for hours and hours each day, without overworking those muscles. That's just my impression, but it makes sense to me if I read it that way. One could do 2 hours of cardio and not injure themselves, but if you try to do 2 hours of bicep curls you are asking for injury!

That's the thing about personal trainers, even ones with advanced nutrition degrees. There's a lot of wiggle room in nutrition, and there's a lot of strategies out there, while they all have the same goal, there's a bunch of different ways to get there. I'm sure that everything she says makes a ton of sense in her mind, and I love her training techniques, but I also admit that they don't work for everyone. I'm actually not a huge fan of her nutrition information. That isn't to say I think she's wrong, it's just not the way I go about it, and my way works for me (and many many others). A lot of her philosophies match up with mine, but some don't. The main thing to do is take the stuff that works in your head, and tweak the stuff that doesn't work.

I'm sure she'd agree, in order for any program to work, it has to be something that you can be confident in, and can do consistently. What you have to do is weigh her information against the things that work for you, if they are totally contradictory, then you're body doesn't work like the specific technique that she is saying, that's ok, our bodies are all different, some respond to some stimuli, some don't. Every person is going to have their own plan. If you take her general statements and apply your own personal twist to them (and by that I mean small tweaks, not twisting it all around so it's a different plan), you're most likely going to see very positive results.

IMHO people rely a lot on the advice of others with regards to health and weight loss. Common sense (an area where people are on the whole, very sub-par in the US) will dictate what works for you. Extremes ARE extreme, if a plan sounds goofy, or weird, or like it won't work, then it probably won't. This isn't to say experts in health and fitness aren't truly experts, but really for the most part, you know your body pretty well, trust your own judgment, build your workout and eating based on what you need, make good choices based on informed and practical knowledge, and seek out experts when you need help, not for every little bit of your lifestyle.

Just my humble opinion.