I heart my sports bra. One tip for you about that, though: This probably won’t be an issue for quite some time, but after a while the elastic in the band can start to go. You might not notice that it feels any looser when you’re wearing it, but if you notice that the band is starting to chafe you at all, that’s a sign that the elastic has worn out and you need to replace the bra. I’m telling you this so you don’t make the mistake I did, which is to say, “Hm, my sports bra is starting to chafe me. Maybe I gained weight or something. I will just put up with it and maybe it will get better on its own.” :smack:
Now…you get Athlete’s Foot.
Good luck with that.
Or you lose so much weight that one day you realise you can just take it on and off like a half-tshirt. It’s not doing you any good then, trust me. 
Why do my tits always go first? Why not my ass, or my belly, or my thighs?
If you’re just walking on the treadmill/light ellipticalling (is that a word? ellipticalling?) you don’t something more than what you get off the rack, but should you amp up, may I suggest the Champion Powerback sportsbra? I’m a C/D cup, and it keeps you snug.
Having a support group can be very good; if they start dropping like flies though, you’ll have to be the leader! Good luck!! 
Don’t worry about what you wear. In any gym where I appear, you will never be the worst-dressed person in the place. By comparison, you will look like the acme of fashion.
And don’t be afraid to ask - for a spot, or even advice. Use common sense - if I am benching 205 and you need to use the empty bar, then you will want to wait until I am done and then I will be happy to spot you, or show you how it is done.
Finding the perfect routine is not nearly as important as just showing up and doing it. Free weights are better than machines, unless you like machines and therefore do them consistently. If you like the treadmill better than aerobics classes, then go do the treadmill and don’t worry about it.
There are two kinds of people in the world - those who talk about what they are going to do, and those who do it. By going to the gym, you have moved into the second group, and that’s where all the buff people are.
Regards,
Shodan
All good advise except the bolded part. Don’t bring your bag into the workout area. It’s a danger to others. Tripping in a gym is a bad thing.
All of the advice above it excellent but the key piece is to actually GO. Schedule it like you would any appointment, make it an uncancelable priority.
No bags, gotcha. But the ferrets are still all good, right?
Oh sorry, I thought the ferret went without saying. Bring two, you never know if you need extra.
I checked in on this thread to make a few of these points, especially the one about how the key to losing fat (not just body weight) is (1) from monitoring and improving the quantity and quality of your diet, (2) from doing ever-increasing amounts of cardio while not overdoing it from the get-go, and (3) by making the changes permanent (i.e., changing the way you think about eating, and making sure cardio exercise becomes a staple routine in your life).
I was going to cite my creds for advice based on my success at implementing a program like that on my own a few years back, but (a) I admit to backsliding in the past 18 months and am now focused on regaining the lost ground (or rather, re-losing about 8 lbs .of gained ground), and (b) listen to Markxxx, he knows of what he speaks - just check out his pic on the latest SDMB Gallery thread! :eek:
Unfortunately, I would disagree with most of this.
[ul][li]The part about losing weight is sort of beside the point. Most people want to lose fat. Muscle is denser than fat, thus it is common not to lose a lot of weight but still gain muscle and lose fat (and look and feel infinitely better). [/li][li]Aerobic exercise is not the be-all and end-all of exercise, even if your goal is losing fat. If you build muscle, you raise your metabolic rate so that you will burn calories even when you are not at the gym. This is because it takes energy to maintain muscle tone (defined here as “a very weak state of contraction in the muscle”). So, if you have only half an hour to train, fifteen minutes of weights and fifteen minutes of aerobics is better than thirty straight minutes of aerobics, as well as easier on your joints.[/li][li]Free weights are always better. As I said above, if you prefer machines (which women usually do, for some reason) that’s fine, but free weights are more effective, since you are not forced into lifting the way the machine is set up to move.[/li][li]You don’t need a trainer. Basic research with an open but skeptical mind is all that is required. Again, if you want to hire somebody, fine, but I have been lifting for more than thirty years and and have heard all the fads. By not bothering with trainers, I have avoided most of them.[/li][li]You do not need to change your routine every month, especially not if you are just beginning. Most of the gains during the first month of training are not due to muscle growth; they are due to the learning curve. You are developing the ability to contract your muscles more forcefully, not necessarily making the fibers larger. [/li]
If you are easily bored, it won’t necessarily hurt to change, but there is no need to change if it is working for you. I would recommend sticking to a basic routine (3 sets of 8 reps in the basic squat/bench press/pulldowns/standing press/calf raise/crunches/rows routine that you start with), and not change it until you have been able to increase the weights at least three times, or six months, whichever is longer.
[/ul]
Again, much more important is that you just do it, even if you decide that everything I have said is wrong.
Regards,
Shodan
FYI, there is some good info on weight-training for women (focusing on free weights) at stumptuous.com. If you are interested in weights, I mean.
Agree on the comments in blue, but would object to the comments in red… I do not claim to be an expert, but from what I have learned and applied anyway, you can’t “gain muscle” and “lose fat” at the same time - you have to do it in turns. This is because the one activity, gaining mass, involves a calorie surplus (eating more calories than you expend), while the other, losing mass, involves a calorie deficit (expending more calories than you consume). This is based around some “maintenance level” of calories at which you would remain exactly as you are now.
To retain lean mass (muscle) while losing only fat requires keeping the deficit relatively low - nothing dramatic like taking in only 70% of maintenance calories - and doing some weight training to keep them from being targeted as a source of body burning.
True, lean mass burns calories (even when at rest, though more so when in use) while fat is inert. For the most part it’s almost literally a “spare tire”. However gaining muscle is much harder than losing fat - you’d have to work out a lot to gain just 5 lbs. of muscle in a year, while calorie cutting and cardio to burn fat while doing some weights to retain muscle can lose about 1 lb. of fat a week for many people (a rule of thumb that has proven true for myself at least).
So if your primary goal is to lose fat, cardio and diet are the primary means - not weight training, though that helps greatly to focus where the loss comes form. If you are only going to do one side, do the cardio. Because most people’s fitness goals involve pretty much only that: to lose fat. If your goal is to get (more) ripped, however, the right approach would be to lose the fat first to show your (possibly scrawny) lean bod, and then work on inflating that into something more impressive. If you’re already at a reasonably low body fat then you get to skip that step, but most first-time gym-goers driven to do so based on feeling fat aren’t there yet.
As for free weights vs. machines - I agree with you that they’re more effective, and it’s all I do myself now these days in my basement. But I think Markxxx’s point was that for a complete beginner, a new gym-goer, machines are probably safer. A lot of people go into weights too quickly and drop them on themselves or choose ones that are too heavy. If you stick to the basics though, I’m sure you don’t need a trainer to learn to use them properly, what with all the video guides on the web these days.
Good on you for deciding to join a gym and work toward fitness!
When working out, I need peppy music to keep me focused-- the fewer distractions from keeping a good pace on the treadmill, the better. Since the community I live in has a workout room, I’m lucky to not have to pay fees every month to work out indoors, but if I am indoors, I need a LOT more stimulation than when I’m working out in the neighborhood on the sidewalks in the surrounding area.
As with what everyone else said, make it a regular priority appointment; if you have to make it feel like a daily date with the gym, so be it-- the point is getting there and getting business done.
I don’t know why people have to make it so complicated. Go and have fun and treat it like a playground. Make some friends, find a way to make it enjoyable. I just started a month ago and I’m hooked. I am a big girl and I was shy at first but now I walk in like I own the place!
Seriously the first time I went alone I went straight to the locker room and had a panic attack. It’s a shock that I ever went back. But I find it fun. I like the distraction of the TVs on the treadmills and bikes. I love working my back muscles; it makes me feel stronger. I do stick to the machines, mostly because the free weights are always busy and besides the machines are just more fun to me and it seems to be working for me. I have more energy now and I’m doing things I couldn’t do just a month ago. Just be positive. It’s all for you.
I’ve heard “being fat can get solved. Stupidity, on the other hand…”
Something else I thought of; two pieces of advice from the equipment I just bought to use at home (I like exercising about 6am, gyms here open at 10am at the earliest), both paraphrased:
1.- the rowing machine says to set the resistance “at a level that feels fairly easy.” That may seem counterintuitive, but the thing is, if you set it too hard, you’ll end up lasting a lot less. You should feel the work after a while, not get cramps in seconds.
2.- a trainer can help you figure out routines, circuits and settings which work for you - but (s)he’s not you: if the trainer says something which doesn’t seem to make sense, ask. If something they’ve told you to do feels weird, ask. I’ve had much better experience with people over 40 than below 30; I think it’s because the people below 30 are “sporty” by definition, whereas I’m not, and the ones over 40… are sporty, but also experienced and old enough to understand that not everybody is, and that different body types respond differently. They’ve also been better at understanding things like “that heart rate you tell me to aim for is lower than my rate at rest” (it was: I’ve inherited from several ancestors an extremely low BP and extremely high heart rate) and pulling a specific formula instead of trying to insert me into their standard chart. The pulsometer I bought had this info 
but I’m not copying it here because I don’t have its booklet handy and because I think it’s best if you talk about that with a trainer at the gym.
Before buying anything (a pulsometer or a podometer or what-ever) - find a trainer or other source that you’re comfortable with to help you decide whether you should get it or not and choose an appropriate one. For example, I decided to buy a pulsometer because part of my objectives is to get higher BP/lower heart rate (my doc says it should work; maybe; she hopes; well, it certainly won’t hurt - I say “amen”); I chose a model that’s not valid for a gym (it’s not “coded” and would interfere with similar models nearby) but which has a cloth band (more comfortable than the rubber models). If I wasn’t interested in cardio, the pulsometer wouldn’t make sense; if I was going to a gym, a coded model would have been the logical choice.
Any exercise and equipment you use have to work for you; what works for your neighbor across the street will not necessarily work for you and vice versa.