What am I doing wrong? Why is the weight not coming off?

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The first stone was easy.

I was calorie counting, eating 1600 calories a day, and then slowly started to put the weight back on.

I have now spent two months on 1200 calories a day approximately, and I have only lost 2.5 lbs. I eat plenty of veg, two fruits a day, just 50 grams of rice/potato/couscous, plenty of fish, etc. Meals go into an app like my fitness pal, so I know where I stand in terms of calories, etc.

I exercise 2-4 times per week, including a one hour session of weights.
I am generally active and on my feet.

I just dont understand why the weight is not coming off!

Honestly, I was just googling the same thing.

I'm the same!

I've started to cut porridge out for breakfast and have eggs instead. Hopefully that'll shift it. Rest of the day is salads, soups, grilled meat etc. Did have wine and a small slice birthday cake at weekend but other that that, I'm a bloody angel.

This last stone is an absolute bastard.

Do you have a lot to lose?

Portions are fine, i weigh my dinners!
I only drink water, perhaps some diet coke. As for hot drinks, I have black coffee, no milk and no sugar, or green tea.

I dont eat chocolate, biscuits, cakes, crisps, etc.

I have the odd nut bar with some chocolate, or a tiny 24g piece of chocolate, but I include that in my app so it is counted.

By days off, do you mean days off work or days off from calorie counting? If the latter, maybe once every couple of weeks. Yesterday it was my sons birthday and I ate 1650 calories, but that was after being between 11-1300 for three weeks.

I have another stone to lose.

I have not had any wine for a month now, due to the calorie content.

My breakfast is just less than 170 calories. I snack frequently, and my lunch is never more than 300 calories, and my dinner in the region of 400.

Thats what I thought.
I have a nutritionist at a diet club behind me, and a Personal Trainer who is literally kicking my arse into shape, and I really thought that by doing it this way the weight would shift.
I have gone on 5 long cross country skiing trips over Easter, each 3-4 hours climbing up to over 400 meters on effing skis, without eating more despite the effort, and no change in my weight.
On Tuesday I spent a long 8 hours on my feet as a TA in a primary, with outdoors rounds in the playground, and only ate 1100 calories. On my feet yesterday and today. And still no weight loss.

It is really demoralizing.

Take measurements rather than weight when you get to this stage, often you find you are losing inches but not weight.

Also your daily calories sounds like it is below your BMR, too low.

I am not really losing cm either.
I am measuring my arms, my neck, my waist, hips and thighs weekly.

I have even started adding avocado and smoked salmon to my salads to add healthy fat without carbs to help burn the fat, and still nothing.

If you are weight lifting you will NOT lose weight. You have to focus on 'inches lost'. Also if you don't eat enough your body will go into starvation mode and refuse to lose any more weight.
Up your calories slightly and have smaller meals.

www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20568347,00.html

You might find you actually need to eat a bit more!

Check out blood sugar diet. I did sw, lost 21 lb, stayed on it strictly for another year and lost nothing.
Am getting really good weight loss with BSD, and an never hungry.

I saw on trust me I'm a doctor on BBC that if you have a longer period without eating you'll lose more weight. So have your breakfast late and your dinner early so you have a long period in-between your last meal of the day and your first meal of the morning. They did a comparison of people eating like that compared to people who had the sand calories but without the long gap, and the long gap people lost weight.

I did not think you went into "starvation mode" when you still had fat to take from?

I will check out this blood sugar diet.

I eat small but frequent meals to keep my metabolism active.

Like, an apple or a banana between breakfast and lunch, a youghurt between lunch and dinner, etc.

Ok, the type of food I eat seem very similar to the blood sugar diet. But I would not survive on just 800 calories a day ....

I struggled with getting down to 1200. Got headaches and dizzyness in the beginning.

If you are weight lifting you will NOT lose weight. You have to focus on 'inches lost'. Also if you don't eat enough your body will go into starvation mode and refuse to lose any more weight.

These are both myths. Even elite body builders only gain around 17lb of muscle a year.

Also your body does not go into starvation mode. It does however adjust your bmr to match your intake. You can reset your bmr, but it takes time.

My pt wants me to do weights because it increases metabolism and it keeps burning fat (to put it in simple terms) even after I finish the session. He mostly focuses on large muscle groups such as legs and bum, and a little bit on arms and core.

I was weighed today, and he was happy, saying I had lost 700g in one week, and he does not really want me to lose more per week.
I am feeling a bit better about it. He showed me his chart for me and the first couple of weeks the weight was not moving while we were figuring out the best eating plan for me. But he showed me that there has been a steady weight loss the last 4 weeks after I "stabilized" at 1200 calories per day. This way I will lose 3-4 kg per month, and should reach target weight by August....

It seems so far away...

We usually do squats with 40kg weighs on my shoulders, and 70 kg ground lifts in three sets of 10. Or, rapid intervals with less weights. I am MUCH stronger than I used to be, but I need the fat to shift!

Believe me you are doing the right things. There is no such thing as starvation mode so don't fall for that little gem of absolute nonsense! I have lost 2 stone doing more or less exactly what you are doing and I could have written the same things over and over again but I have come to learn that we really are all very different and weight loss is not linear. The first couple of months with the personal trainer was tough and I just didn't understand why the weight was falling off me but I do believe I was building up muscle and losing inches and the scales weren't really showing it. It's funny how the scales react to how you look as well. I have stayed the same for about a month but I have lost count of how many people have told me today how much weight I have lost - for some bizarre reason I must look somehow different today than last week because people are even telling me to stop losing weight! Just keep going and it will come off.

700g in one week is roughly what I have lost per week for 3 months on circa 1300 calories a day with approximately 10K steps a day and 1 hours of additional cardio/weight lifting exercise per day.

How tall are you, how old are you, and what do you weigh? You might find that 12-1300 calories a day isn't far off your maintenance, especially if youve been dieting for a while, which knocks about 10% off what you can eat compared with someone who's never dieted.

If you're still losing, even very slowly, I would guess that your maintenance calorie level is just lower than you think it is.