you can either

A: diet and get skinny and cut
or
B: Bulk up.

you can't do both successsfully.

I'd work on getting your weight down to about 190 or so, then building up your muscle... then once you have the muscle mass you like, "cut" and lose more fat and work on toning.


not to say that you can't put weights into your workout routine.

I'm 5'11' and used to be 235-240, with weight traiing, cardio and diet, i got down to 182, with a small gut still. From there I started lifting weights pretty hard - I'm at 195 right now, a little more fat than at 182, but not much. Bascially, if you want to build lean mass ,you have to eat.

When i lost weight, i started on the elipticals b/c i was getting bad shin splints. If you can run, run. if you're tearing your knees and shins up, lose some weight doing hardcore elipticals.

I'd run if you can - running is gonna burn the most calories. Its not necessarily how far you can run, but how long and what pace. build up to maybe an 8 min mile pace, and run for 30 min -- that'd be a good pace, but will take effort to build up to.