Thanks for the help folks and the positive comments

I'm not currently lifting weights at all, but if it will help then I'll get hold of some.

As to the diet, yeah, I probably don't eat enough meat or fish, I forgot to mention that I take a multivitamin and a fish oil supplement also.

oh and thanks for the link Ross what a great site

iron_worker - how do I work out the maintenance level of calories I need? sorry if that sounds like a dumb question lol - up to now watching what I eat has basically meant don't order so much I can't finish it (easy to see how I got into the state I'm in really), so thoughts of calories etc have never really entered my head.