Weight distribution/amount

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12 lbs with no exposure suit at all seems like an awful lot of lead. Beyond that trim is very dependent on how you hold your body underwater. Are your fins horizontal? Legs straight vs knees bent fins vertical vs knees bent fins horizontal are all drastically different. If your fins aren’t horizontal you loose the up/down reaction surface at the furthest point from your center of gravity, you’re going to feel a bit out of control. As a friend of mine would say, get your form right and STOP finning, see what happens.

With all that said, give yourself some time to get comfortable in the water. See if the instructor will do another weight check with you, extra weight you don’t need makes everything harder. 500 psi in your tank, you should be able to sink when you exhale and fully deflate the bcd.
 
I am a pretty big guy, too--not far from your statistics.

When I instructed in a pool with a 3mm shorty, I intentionally overweighted myself a bit so that I could descend quickly if needed to deal with an emergency. I wore 6 pounds. When we talked about proper weighting, I would take my weight belt off and demonstrate the weight check--showing the I was properly weighted with a partially full AL 80 and no weights at all while wearing a 3mm shorty. I would be overweighted with no wetsuit and no weights.

When I switched shops and we used a colder pool, I wore a 3mm full suit. Once again, I overweighted myself, wearing 8 pounds. It was an unusual student there that needed 12 pounds while wearing a 3mm full suit.

I cannot imagine you would need 12 pounds wearing no wetsuit.
 
Also for consideration is how high do you belt up your tank, Obviously the max is that the valve does not touch your head, but but you can also belt him lower. I have, with the help of a buddy optimized the weight distribution on my BCD in the pockets in the front, the pockets in the back, a small weight on the tank and the position of the tank. my BCD has an adjustable strap that goes over the valve. I have calibrated the lenght of the strap to the position of the tank, so it is easy every time the get the tank at the same position belted to my BCD
 
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