Am I not doing all that I thought I was? Input greatly appreciated :)

I have an ellipitical at my house that I have been using religiously for the last two weeks( religiously being every day) When I first started I could only do 12 mintues. I'm now up to 22 minutes.. my problem is that it that the resistance is broken.. so there is no reistence, however I get an increased heart rate, I'm totally out of breath by the end and sweating like a piggy!! I started googling about ellipticals with no resistence and what I found made me wanna cry!! Everyone was bad mouthing it and saying it is practically useless.  I know it can't be totally useless if I'm feeling the way I do afterward. I am obviously increasing my cardio and burning calories, right?? I'm just discouraged and confused now and need some advice here!!
I'm trying to remember to write everything here that I think people will be asking in their responses.. ummm... I'm 21, 5'6, and about 230.  I'm just trying to loose weight and get healthy.. I'm not training for a marathon or anything . I do other excercises beside the elliptical (mostly kickboxing and core excercises).  Alright everyone.. sorry for the run-on sentences and frantic tone! lol.. any input would be greatly appreciated :)

I think while not having resistance maybe isn't the best for elliptical, you are MOVING YOUR BODY! That counts for something!

If you are up & moving and have your heart-rate elevated for over 20 minutes, everyday, you are doing just fine!

KEEP IT UP!

My guess would be that you are benefitting from it right now, but that you'll "grow out" of your broken elliptical fairly soon. At some point, you'll stop being able to break a sweat, as there's a limit to how fast your legs can go around with no resistance!

Once you reach that point, you may need to find a different machine or a different kind of cardio, but it sounds like you've found a starting point that works.

This may be super-dumb of me to ask, but are you SURE there's no resistance?  Have you like, hit the button and held it until it stopped?  There was this one machine in my gym that I thought was broken because when I put the resistance from 1 to 15 .... there was no change.  Turns out, the machine can be put up to resistance 35 or higher, and I just hadn't been able to feel a change from 1 to 15 and had originally given up on it.  Now I use it all the time :]

You must be really flailing on that elliptical if you aren't getting any resistance.  I'd say that you will probably outgrow it, and you might pull a muscle / go flying off if you're working it that quickly.  I know that I started out with resistance 6 on an elliptical, then quickly moved up to 8, then 9, and plateaued with a workout that consisted mostly of 9 but 5-10 minute spurts of up to 12.   On the other hand, I've always been semi in-shape, so your situation might be different.

Well.. the screen part of it doesn't work.. so I can't actually "read" that there is no resistance.. and it has one of those knobs you turn to adjust (yeah.. I know old school) but when you turn it it doesn't affect it at all, so I don't know.  It must have a little.. because I don't go "flying off of it" and it does burn my leg muscle a little.. so I'm not 100% sure.

When I was thinner and going to the gym regularly (when I could afford the gym lol) I used the elliptical with a high resistance and really I think it was just as challenging then as it is now.. and I was in way better shape then.. so who the hell knows? !!

I think it's great that you're are moving and increasing your time.  It is obvious that you are getting your heart rate up and you are breaking a sweat - so...don't worry about it! It's not 'useless' - you are doing great! Way to go!

Don't get frustrated,I do 20 minutes on my stationary bike before my workouts and I only feel warmed up, focus on the other exercises your doing and push yourself there. You also need to strength train to get the rest of your muscles active, hang in there...