Ok, I have been trying to figure out how to go about losing weight. I’m 15 and I weigh 160 5 foot 3 and I have been using my elliptical for the past few days burning about 200 calories in 20 minuets. I am going to cut out the junk food and eat smaller meals, but I have read everywhere that you won’t lose weight with that much exercise. Any opinions? I’m confused and need help, I’m doing this alone so I need some suggestions. Thanks 
You will hear lots of different opinions on how to lose weight. I think that exercise can really help and at worst, you will be more fit. Try to adopt an exercise regime that you can sustain. And then try to make some positive changes in your diet. Cutting junk food and eating smaller meals is a good change Then see how it goes. If those changes don't work, then I am sure you will get many suggestions.
Well at 3500 calories per lb, you can figure that eating the same diet you might expect to lose 1 lb in about 17 days at the rate of burning 200 extra calories a day, all other variables aside.
I'd have to agree that 200 calories burned during exercise in a day aren't going to produce fast results. I find that running is my most effective bang for the buck when it comes to burning calories. I can (according to the treadmill anyway) burn 1000 in less than an hour if I'm cruising along at a good speed or at an incline. At that rate, if I didn't eat higher calories to compensate, I'd lose 1 lb every 3.5 days.
My advice would be to just keep it up and increase your amount if time and or speed of whatever exercises you do as they become easier for you until you get to where you are burning a lot more calories. Keep it up! It can help a lot to have a friend who is also trying to accomplish similar goals, especially someone near your own ability level, so that you can get competitive about it and encourage / motivate eachother. Just my 2 cents worth
Cutting out junk food and exercising will both help! I agree w/ Brian and Sam that 20 minutes may not burn a huge amount of weight. It sometimes takes me that long to get warmed up. In Jeff Galloway’s running books, he suggests that it takes about 45 min to reach the point where you burn fat which helps me feel leaner although most of the time the weight loss isn’t that massive. I’ve lost like 90 lbs off my peak but very gradually. For me it helped a lot to think of getting healthier vs. losing weight and focus on getting into the habit to where I feel like I need to exercise and that works better with eating healthy. Also adding in strength training, like pushups, crunches, etc also can push your metabolism and help you elliptical more strongly. For a long time, I thought ellipticalling was wussier than running but I’ve sort of changed and think that if you elliptical strongly, it can be as effective.
Exercise is a great way to get fit, but it will only contributes to 20% of your weight loss, the other 80% of your weight loss is all about your diet.Here are some tips:
1.Eating smaller portions is a great way to start. Try 3 meal a day with snacks in between your meals if your hungry. Every meal should have 1/2 you plate as vegetables, 1/4 plate as protein (meat, fish, eggs, etc), and 1/4 plate grains (should be whole grains)- look up or google the usda plate method to see what a plate should look like .
2. Also, look at the drinks you are consuming. Liquid calories add a significant amount of calories to your diet but will not satisfy you. Things like juice, chocolate milk, soda, and cream and sugar that is added to coffee. So the main thing you should be drinking is water. you can also decrease the fat percentage of your milk, if your drinking 2% milk you can go down to 1% or Skim milk.
3.How often do you eat out at restaurants? there are a ton of hidden calories in restaurant food (not only fast food, but all food that you dont cook at home),
4.In addition to this, when you start to lose weight, you may start having an increase in low blood sugar (in part due to being more sensitive to insulin). Your health care professional may have to adjust your insulin/basal rates so you dont go low, or you will be consuming a lot of calories to cover the lows,
Thank you guys this made me feel a lot better! I going to find other exercises to do along with the elliptical and I will definitely change my eating. I don’t have much encouragement at home or anywhere else except for here, so it means a lot!