My first suggestion would be stop trying to lose weight. Seriously weight has nothing to do with it. It's all about losing fat. When you start training your body starts to reshape itself. It starts to build muscle as a response to the extra work load you put on it. Slowly it also starts burning fat. Muscle ways more then fat so you may find that you are actually gaining weight. However in the first 3 months you will notice that your clothes are looser on you, good sign of improvement your body is starting to trim.

If you are trying to lose fat then you have to watch what you eat. Exercise alone will not do it. It matters not if you are 221 lb what matters is if you are a healthier 221 lb If you are one of those people that absolutely need to quantify everything then get a body fat scale. It gives a much more accurate picture of your bodies health

Hope this helps

What you'll need to establish first is your basal metabolic rate (BMR). This is the amount of calories your body requires as a BARE MINIMUM to sustain life (respiration, digestion, circulation, etc.). There are several formulas for this, so I'd suggest using a minimum of 3 formulas, then averaging them. Let's say your BMR works out to 2100 calories (just an example), then you need to figure how many additional calories you burn in a day via running, your job type, etc. If you are a manual laborer, your calorie expenditures for work will be much higher then if you are a desk jockey. Let's say you determine you burn an additional 700 calories a day from work, exercise and anything else you do, that gives you a total calorie need of 2800 calories a day to MAINTAIN weight. It takes a calorie deficit of 3500 calories to lose 1 lb of fat. So if you reduced your calorie intake from food to 2300/day, that would put you on pace to lose 1 lb of fat per week.

Calories in vs. calories out is the ONLY thing that determines fat loss. Low carb diets are based on the principal that eating high carb foods alter your body chemistry and actually make you more hungry, therefore making you consume too many calories. If you eat 3000 calories of nothing but plain baked chicken breast, you will still GAIN fat. The very definition of a calorie guarantees this.

If you really want to lose fat, you should go with a healthy, balanced diet but simply restrict your calories by 300-500/day. You'll still be giving your body the nutrition it needs to exercise properly and slowly trimming away fat w/out putting your body into a starvation situation where your BMR actually slows to conserve energy. This will not only negatively affect your energy, but it also requires that you eat less just to maintain the same fat loss. You do not want to be in that situation. If you reduce your calorie intake to 500 below your daily calorie expenditure, you will lose 1 lb of fat / week (approximately since these formulas are all approximations).

Research also shows that losing weight very quickly through diets that severely limit calories, or require a drastic change in diet (i.e. going from a balanced diet to carb heavy, protein heavy, etc.) just don't work in the long term because people can not maintain these changes. People who lose weight slowly through a moderate diet AND exercise are vastly more successful in the long term.

Take it slow, keep running. It'll come off before you know it.

Totally agree with immel. For the reasons s/he suggests athletes should ignore the scale and pay attention to how their pants fit. No blaming your spouse about excessive time in the dryer--tight pants don't lie! Know that if your clothes are looser you look better overall and are getting healthier.