Thanks for the encouragement. Posting here has helped me immensely. I use this thread to hold myself accountable and highly recommend all newbies give it a try.

Welcome Chrissy. It certainly is possible especially at your young age. Keep at it.

I meant to add...any suggestions for increasing my time/mileage?

I am so happy I found this site.  I am a former runner who three years after a divorce, is 80 lbs heavier, (over 200) lbs and haven't been running in two years.  I am scared to death to start all over.  I know how hard the work will be but it's also hard to look at myself and know how far I have backslid.  I'm am doing this for my two beautiful children, and for my life.  So here goes...

Any suggestions on starting over would be greatly appreciated!! 

Hello everyone! My name is Zack and im 25 years old and currentlly at 240. I have always been over weight, 100 pounds in 4th grade, 200 for my drivers license photo and am currently around 240. I havent really even attempted to lose weight until now. I am on a full diet, counting calories and grams of fat and doing a food journal. I have not dranken any alocohol and smoked half of a cigarette in the last 13 days (very good for me)! I I will be doing W2D3 tomorrow morning and am looking forward to it. My lower back is usually very sore for 24 hrs afrer my runs, any suggestions?

Finished week 8 of c25k today. 3 more runs and I am a graduate again...well, for time. Distance will take another week or so.

zerorez, I've run races in the past but not recently. I look forward to signing up for one but I am in no hurry.

I've never heard of a "rest week" every 4 weeks. Could you expland on that?

@Joedadd I read this article here: http://running.about.com/od/runningforbeginners/ss/runningmistakes_8.htm After I realized I had jumped my speed and distance quite quickly and noticed new pain in my knees that was slow to fade. I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to "blow out my knees" like several people I know have. I want to take good maintenance of the machine (me) and do what is needed to keep going. I want to be running at 80. I went from 3 to 3.5 miles a run up to 5.75 in one week and raced at a pace of 12:50 when I had been doing 14:00. I guess I got excited at my progress and put my foot on the gas pedal and saw what I could do. I have now read that 10% is the max you should add per week in an attempt to improve distance.

So I run a comfortable 3.5 mile per run right now, so my next few weeks look like this:

Rest week this week.

Day 1 2 miles

Day 2 2 mlies

Day 3 3 miles

Next week

Day 1 3.8 miles

Day 2 3.8 miles

Day 3 4.4 miles

Week after

Day 1 4.2

Day 2 4.2

Day 3 4.8

etc...

I hope to get to 10k range (my long run day) in about 6 weeks putting me right on schedule for a race in April.

I have read the 10% thing in a lot of places. The best way to calculate it is to take your current run and multiply it by 1.10 which will give you the new distance. =)

Hey--quick update this morning.  Just had my first weigh-in for our workplace Biggest Loser contest, and I'm down 10 lbs.!