Why isn't it working?!

[Swearwolf]

Is it my age? I'm trying so hard to lose weight and it's just not working - last year I went up and down by 4-5lb at a time every couple of months, always putting any weight I lost back on, and this year it's just not shifting at all.

I'm short and about 20lb overweight, and I don't think my goals are unrealistic- I just want to be a size ten, which at 5'2" usually still makes me slightly overweight (but liveable). I'm trying to be sensible and do it in a sustainable way.

I've cut down on milky coffee, toast and butter, cheese, and pasta. Those are the things I was eating too much of, really. I did c25k last year and am now trying to go running 3x a week (I'm not fast but it's way more than I was doing before).

I'm tracking on MFP and struggling to stay below 1200, and even then I think that may be too much for my height.

I'm sad and chubby and worried I'll never lose the weight.

[Bubblemonkey]

Are you actually eating that many calories? Weighing everything out?

[ooooohbetty]

If you were in a calorie deficit you'd lose weight. You need to be really strict and weigh everything and then try and move a bit more

[hen10]

I feel your pain. I have plateaued and have not lost anything over the last 10 days. I am doing MFP and C25K. I did lose a stone so I was really happy with that but now have come to a grinding halt and feel like throwing scales out of the window. Aaargh.

[morrisseysquif]

Are you near the menopause? That makes it so much harder. I'm running cycling and weighing everything and recording on MFP and it's taking twice as long to lose even a pound.
Do some weights as that should help. Or the eating within a certain timeframe.

[Swearwolf]

Thanks everyone - I think I'm sticking to calories correctly but maybe not as well as I should. But I am still eating much less than I was, and doing more exercise than I was, so even if progress was slow, it should still be better than nothing!

I don't think I'm near menopause, I'm 35, but I do seem to have hit a point where it's more of a battle than it was.

[HoneysuckIejasmine]

hen have you reset your goals on MFP? Annoyingly, it doesn't recalculate your calories to reflect your weight loss over time. Quickly swap your goal to something else (e.g. "gain 1lb a week") then switch it back to your actual goal. You may find the calorie goal changes quite a lot.

[BobbyBlueCat]

EVERYTHING needs logged.
Milk in your drinks, oil in your cooking, every lick of the spoon when cooking, every mouthful of left over food on plates, the one chocolate of the desk at work, sauces, spreads. EVERYTHING.
All those little things add up to hundreds of extra calories.

Are you weighing all your food/liquids or just estimating. Because I guarantee if you are estimating then you're UNDERestimating.

Are you weighing your meats and pasta before or after cooked. Because doing the wrong one is hundreds of extra calories you haven't logged.

You need to stay in your calories.
If you go a 'little' bit over, it might not seem like much but over the course of a week/month/year then you're in a massive surplus. And you need a deficit to lose.

Are you logging you exercise calories? If so, and you haven't set up MFP correctly, then it will add those burned calories back on to your allowance for the day. DO NOT EAT BACK CALORIES BURNED DURING EXERCISE. Exercise calories are notoriously over-estimated and you will not have burned anywhere close to that amount so the best thing to do is not even log them.

[LeGrandBleu]

Give us example of what you eat and like PP said, the calories from exercise don't count.

[hen10]

Thanks HoneysuckIejasmine - I did that and it's now saying that I'm not going to be losing more than a pound a week on 1200 calories a day. I've not got much to lose, this is the last stone - but the bugger won't shift! Also I was eating some of my exercise calories so that's going to have to stop. I am trying but life on 1200 calories is miserable, Keep going swearwolf

[HoneysuckIejasmine]

Yeah mfp won't go less that 1200, and I feel your pain on how miserable that is long term. But yeah fitness tracking devices aren't really accurate as everyone's metabolism is so different so it's best to try to refrain from eating calories back.

Again, feel your pain. The last stone is being an absolute bitch to me and has turned in to the last two stone as I rebelled from the 1200 limit in frustration.