Need a little advive?

Jimmyc_

I have been following the calorie count for over 17 days the first week I lost 5 lbs. the beginning of next week I gained 2 to three back and now have been unable to loose it sticking to 1500 calories a day. Need some help of advice as why this is happening.

usmcmp

Are you weighing your food? Are you being consistent?

Weight loss isn't linear. The first week is typically a big loss due to losing water and food waste weight. It typically slows down after that. It's normal to not see a scale loss sometimes, so if you're sure you are accurate you need to be patient.

Also, as a male 1500 calories seems very low. If you have less than 50 pounds to lose you may want to consider changing your rate of loss on here to one pound per week.

JeromeBarry1

Initially, you lose weight because you made changes to your food which resulted in you consuming less sodium. Your body responded by dropping some water. After the first week, your weight changes based on the slow and barely perceptible change in your fat content, the slower and less perceptible change in your muscle content, and rapidly fluctuating dominantly measurable daily change in your water content.

managematics

Overall, I would say that you should be evaluating progress over much longer timeframes. Weight on the scale can easily bounce around several pounds. That isn't just day-to-day variation of the scale. But you can go a few week level and then see a drop of several pounds and then level, etc...

If that 1500 pounds is about a 500 calorie deficit then you're talking about a pound a week. It would really take 5-10 weeks to see movement beyond normal variation.

Paying attention to calories is really a lifestyle thing. MFP maybe able to guess at your baseline metabolism, but it doesn't know. You really gotta give it a month or two to see your rate of loss on 1500 calories and then decide whether you should adjust the net calories to get a different rate.

If you want some more detailed ideas about what could be going on, people here will probably be able to help you better if you gave a lot of detail behind what you're your 1500 calories. What is your height and weight? Is that 1500 net calories, or just what you're consuming. If it's net, what exercise are you doing? What are you eating? Is it home made? Store bought? From a restaurant? If home made, how are you measuring the calories? Measuring portions?

As I said, the very first issue is that it probably takes longer to figure out what rate you're really losing at. But beyond that, there are many pitfalls with how accurately assessing net calories, but knowing what's behind it will help folks point out some of those pitfalls.