I need some help, really.

MikeDiet2023

I have been trying to lose weight for a very long time. I have had many unsuccessful attempts. The only thing that is supposed to work is calorie deficit.
On my latest attempt to lose some weight, which started the beginning of October and is ongoing. I have gained a pound.
I weigh 209 pounds now. I started at 208. I am 6ft tall. I eat 1300 calories a day, which I track exactly in this app. I also walk about 6k steps a day.
Some days my feet hurt and on those days i do my exercise bike.

I am scared I am going to get discouraged and quit again. I dont know what else to do. I need some guidance.

How can i be eating in calorie deficit for 5 weeks and lose nothing but actually gain? It doesnt even make sense right?

This is why I need some help. I dont understand how I have not lost anything but actually gained instead.

Corina1143

2676
How much deficit?
According to tdee calculator, using 30 yrs old, 6 ft, 209, light exercise, tdee would be 2676.
Eating 1300 calories would be putting stress on your body. Your bmi is 28.3, classifying you as overweight, not obese.
How fast are you trying to lose?
How did you reach a goal of 1300 calories?

MikeDiet2023

Male
age 43
6ft
i am eating 1300 calories a day or less
i weigh 209 now. My start weight beginning of october was 208lbs.
Desk Job
Goals I’d like to get down to like 170 ultimately.
But my short term goal is to get under 200.

My very short term goal is to just make the scale go down instead of up.

When I try and lift weights I always hurt my back. And I do extremely low weights and do it slowly.

I walk a good amount. I try and do 6.5 k steps a day if my feet arent hurting me.
If they are I do my exercise bike.

Also anyone that reads this and is willing to help feel free to message me.

MikeDiet2023

Corina1143 wrote: »

2676
How much deficit?
According to tdee calculator, using 30 yrs old, 6 ft, 209, light exercise, tdee would be 2676.
Eating 1300 calories would be putting stress on your body. Your bmi is 28.3, classifying you as overweight, not obese.
How fast are you trying to lose?
How did you reach a goal of 1300 calories?

I looked at some app of how much i needed to eat a day to lose the weight i want and it said if i ate about that much Id be the weight i want by the date i want and all thats happened is i have lost literally nothing and gained instead.

i have no idea what tdee or bmi is. I am not sure why you are writing the number 2676. What does that mean?

I dont care if I lose weight super fast or anything. As long as the scale was going down. A pound every 2 weeks would be nice? But if that were the case i would have lost 3 pounds by now. And so far I gained one instead. Makes no sense.

springlering62

You mention pain several times. Pain and inflammation can cause temporary water weight gain. Even “simple” pain like the good old duck walk from new exercise can be good for several pounds.

I’m nursing a sprained toe right now. A stupid sprained toe. And I’m up a couple of pounds. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Our very wise and intuitive bodies retain water and direct it to injuries or soreness, for the purposes of healing. Once the pain is gone, ya basically wee it out.

If your weighing and logging is complete and accurate, you are severely under eating. I’m a 61 year old 5’7” female and would be comatose with those few calories. Nourish your body and fuel your activities, please. We don’t want to see you here in a month or two wondering why you’re losing hanks of hair, losing muscle, fatigued, and angry at the world.

This is not to fuss at you. We want you to be successful. We all got off to equally rocky starts til we got the hang of it. Being here long enough to reach that stage is so important.

Do you have a fitness tracker? My Apple Watch rocked my world- literally- and helped me jump the chasm of “I don’t get this” to “oooooooh, that’s how the numbers work”.

Hugs to you, mike!!!

As an aside….No one can message you unless you’ve accepted them as a friend. Mods did that do to a pornbot attack a few years ago.

springlering62

Also, with your height,you probably carry your weight a lot better than I did five inches shorter and 20 pounds heavier when I started out. It may not show up as quickly as it does on someone shorter.

Don’t rush it. That’s when people lose the faith. Set a lower weekly goal that gives you some food. Take photos along the way. Measure yourself regularly.

MikeDiet2023

springlering62 wrote: »

You mention pain several times. Pain and inflammation can cause temporary water weight gain. Even “simple” pain like the good old duck walk from new exercise can be good for several pounds.

I’m nursing a sprained toe right now. A stupid sprained toe. And I’m up a couple of pounds. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Our very wise and intuitive bodies retain water and direct it to injuries or soreness, for the purposes of healing. Once the pain is gone, ya basically wee it out.

If your weighing and logging is complete and accurate, you are severely under eating. I’m a 61 year old 5’7” female and would be comatose with those few calories. Nourish your body and fuel your activities, please. We don’t want to see you here in a month or two wondering why you’re losing hanks of hair, losing muscle, fatigued, and angry at the world.

This is not to fuss at you. We want you to be successful. We all got off to equally rocky starts til we got the hang of it. Being here long enough to reach that stage is so important.

Do you have a fitness tracker? My Apple Watch rocked my world- literally- and helped me jump the chasm of “I don’t get this” to “oooooooh, that’s how the numbers work”.

Hugs to you, mike!!!

As an aside….No one can message you unless you’ve accepted them as a friend. Mods did that do to a pornbot attack a few years ago.

Well yeah. Pain everywhere is pretty much my body. Okay, well not that extreme but i have a lot of it often.

I will be real. I am supposed to be in calorie deficit to lose weight right? How in the world is rasining my calories going to help me get the fat off? How am I going to be in caloric deficit if i am going to eat more calories than I am supposed to? I have been told by a few people to raise my calories. Okay lets say I do that. Then how am I going to lose weight?
Dont I need to be in calorie deficit?

This is what this is like

me “hi i want to lose weight help”

person “be in calorie deficit thats all there is to it”

Me “okay i have done calorie deficit for 5-6 weeks and gained a pound. its not working”

Person “you should eat more calories”

So which is it? This doesnt even make sense at this point. I am getting conflicting information.

sollyn23l2

MikeDiet2023 wrote: »

springlering62 wrote: »

You mention pain several times. Pain and inflammation can cause temporary water weight gain. Even “simple” pain like the good old duck walk from new exercise can be good for several pounds.

I’m nursing a sprained toe right now. A stupid sprained toe. And I’m up a couple of pounds. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Our very wise and intuitive bodies retain water and direct it to injuries or soreness, for the purposes of healing. Once the pain is gone, ya basically wee it out.

If your weighing and logging is complete and accurate, you are severely under eating. I’m a 61 year old 5’7” female and would be comatose with those few calories. Nourish your body and fuel your activities, please. We don’t want to see you here in a month or two wondering why you’re losing hanks of hair, losing muscle, fatigued, and angry at the world.

This is not to fuss at you. We want you to be successful. We all got off to equally rocky starts til we got the hang of it. Being here long enough to reach that stage is so important.

Do you have a fitness tracker? My Apple Watch rocked my world- literally- and helped me jump the chasm of “I don’t get this” to “oooooooh, that’s how the numbers work”.

Hugs to you, mike!!!

As an aside….No one can message you unless you’ve accepted them as a friend. Mods did that do to a pornbot attack a few years ago.

Well yeah. Pain everywhere is pretty much my body. Okay, well not that extreme but i have a lot of it often.

I will be real. I am supposed to be in calorie deficit to lose weight right? How in the world is rasining my calories going to help me get the fat off? How am I going to be in caloric deficit if i am going to eat more calories than I am supposed to? I have been told by a few people to raise my calories. Okay lets say I do that. Then how am I going to lose weight?
Dont I need to be in calorie deficit?

This is what this is like

me “hi i want to lose weight help”

person “be in calorie deficit thats all there is to it”

Me “okay i have done calorie deficit for 5-6 weeks and gained a pound. its not working”

Person “you should eat more calories”

So which is it? This doesnt even make sense at this point. I am getting conflicting information.

I'm going to irritate some people and say you're probably eating a lot more than you think you are. Really focus on tracking those calories and being honest with yourself.

springlering62

I know, it sounds counterintuitive.

You can be to the point you are undereating so badly that you are stressing your body. Stress of any kind -mental, physical- can cause “gain”, usually water weight.

All I can tell you is from my own experience, I started at 1470 doing little exercise. My dietician advised me to increase to 1700, by the time I began exercising regularly and hired a personal trainer, she made me increase to 1900 and then 2100.

I lost weight steadily throughout, even at the higher calories. That’s the trend I see many people here reporting. I currently maintain averaging about 2800, although granted, I’m extremely active.

So many things can cause stress and temporary weight gain: under eating, muscle soreness, over exercise, surgery, cabin pressure in airplanes, long car trips, a salty snack or meal, an unusually high carb meal or snack, job relationship or family stress, even obsessing about weight itself.

My strongest advice would be to let the reins loose a little, set a lower weekly loss goal, tap in to a fitness tracker to start developing a database you can become familiar with, and let the process work. And most of all, have patience.

All I’m hearing from you is pain, discomfort, worry, lack of results. That, my friend, is stress, major stress.

I’d also suggest going over to the Success Stories board and looking for the NSV (non-scale victories) thread. Sometimes in our focus on the scale, we overlook other substantial wins we’ve made.

You may be one of those people who struggle for a month or two and then experience a “whoosh”, which is a quick “overnight” lost (although we all know there’s nothing overnight in this game! 😂)

But stick to it. Loss has helped me in so many ways: substantially better health, confidence, so so many ways life has changed.

frhaberl

Can you provide more details on how you’re eating and how you’re tracking what you’re eating?
-Are you weighing, measuring volume, or using generic measurements such as 1 banana?
-Are you preparing most of your own meals or eating food from chain restaurants or eating food from local restaurants?
-Are you eating a consistent number of calories each day, or are you in a higher deficit during the week and a lower deficit during the weekend?
-Are you eating the same foods over and over, or eating something different most days?
-Are you tracking every food consistently or are there meals/days where you give an estimate? If the latter, how frequently are you estimating?

You may already be doing these things, but if you aren’t I would suggest:
-Weigh everything for 4 weeks, especially fats/oils.
-Prepare the majority of your meals yourself, using raw ingredients or well defined packaged foods (accurately weighed per above).
-If you are eating at or from a restaurant, try to select chains that publish their nutritional information online.
-Try to eat the same foods over and over. This isn’t a requirement, but makes the above suggestions easier.
-Log EVERYTHING. If you didn’t weigh out the peanut butter on the spoon, DON’T LICK IT. If you didn’t weigh and log that bite of food from the pan or your kid’s plate DON’T EAT IT.

The good news is that you won’t have to be this strict forever, but while you’re trying to figure out why the scale is going in the wrong direction you’ll want to have as accurate a calories in estimate as you can (there will still be inaccuracies even with these suggestions, but they’ll be minimized).

After you have done this for at least 4 weeks, look at your AVERAGE daily calories and your weight loss/gain over that period and you should be able to get a better reading on what your actual calorie deficit is. I wouldn’t worry about the “calories out” side of the equation, as long as you’re fairly consistent (which it sounds like you are with trying to hit a similar step count each day and compensating with biking if your feet hurt).

As far as increasing your calories to lose weight, I think it might make sense if you are finding that you eat 1300 calories for a stretch of time, but overeat periodically. 1300 does sound pretty low to me, given that it’s my base calorie target (47 year old 5’5” female at 172 lbs) and I usually eat 200-300 above that with added exercise calories. You may want to target 1600 calories a day, if you feel like that’s a level that you can consistently maintain for a period of 4 weeks. You should still be in a deficit at that level. Worst case scenario, you gain another pound over the next 4 weeks and have gained a lot of information. I know that sounds horrible, but I’m 99% sure you’ll actually lose weight AND gain knowledge.

cwolfman13

You are most likely consuming more calories than you think you are. The 2600ish calories mentioned above is what TDEE calculators estimate your maintenance calorie requirements to be, assuming light active. Pretty much any male would be losing weight quite rapidly if they were actually consuming 1300 calories per day consistently...the minimum recommendation for a sedentary adult male is 1500 calories. The average male has a BMR alone of around 1700-1800 calories per day...those are just the calories your body requires for mere existence...you would burn them in a coma.

There are numerous reasons you could be eating more than you think. Eyeballing portions rather than weighing them out or measuring is a big one. Selecting incorrect entries is another, as well as selecting generic entries like "lasagna" or something that is someone else's recipe for which you have no idea what they actually put into it. Eating out regularly can also be problematic in that only large restaurant chains with 20 or more locations are required to provide nutritional information, and due to the nature of food preparation in a kitchen, they are allowed as much as 20% discrepancy. Surprisingly, many people new to logging also neglect to log certain things like cooking oils (very calorie dense) and fluid calories from beverages as well as neglecting to log various snacks or a little bite of this or that. All of these things add up.

For reference, I'm 49 years old 5'10" and lose a good Lb per week eating around 2300 calories per day. I have a desk job, but would put myself somewhere between light active and moderately active with life outside of the office to include deliberate exercise (which isn't remotely a lot).

All of that aside, if you're really being bang on with everything I'd definitely see a Dr. and get some blood work done to see if there are any other medical issues impeding you...but most often, this is a matter of inaccurate logging.

PAV8888

Seriously and plainly and without any judgement

The numbers your discuss are very far off. Very far into far outlier territory.

--eliminate mechanical errors. We will return to logging but tackle the scale. Is the scale on carpet? Is the floor unyielding. Is the scale rigid in good shape or bendy with dust bunnies and sticky feet? Level concrete operating room with fresh batteries & calibration routine would be ideal. Also grab a jug of milk or pop or what have you and see if your weight increases as expected when you weigh yourself holding it. Weigh in morning before eating and hopefully in a relatively empty state. Plug numbers in weight trend app. Observe the trend.

--consider seeing a doctor and dietitian.

Discuss with doctor thyroid and any other blood work that may be indicating why you may have trouble losing

Discuss logging and portions with dietitian. I will come back to loging later but again even assuming logging errors... you are quite far off.

--is there a known reason for the level of pain you're discussing? The pain and the conditions may be reducing your daily burn beyond what is expected. Depending on the reason ramping up may or may not be a good idea and a doctor or physical therapist discussion may be in order on how to go about this.

When I started dealing with my obesity just shy of 10 years back, my first goal was to consistently walk at least 5,000 steps every single day for a month. And it took me more than 3 months to get there. I didn't even have a fitness band back then, and counting steps on the phone does give us a lower number then using a band. The level of activity you discuss in a perfectly healthy middle aged individual would represent just over an hour of moderate activity a day and would be captured in MFP by the lightly active setting for most people.

Remember me at 48 and sub 5k (some days sub 500 steps) almost 10 years ago? Ten years later a sub 15k step day is an exception and sub 10k means I'm either sick or overwhelmed.

Beyond that. Logging. So much nuance and work can go into logging.

Do you eat in or do you eat out? Do you have unlogged days. Do you pre plan your food?

Look. On the face of it you should be able to lose weight, consistently while eating 2000 Cal-- possibly even more. So we have a substantial gap here.

Rule #1: if it's not weighed on a kitchen scale and already logged it does not go in the mouth.

Corollaries: looking for entries takes time. Have an apple or equivalent (carrot, broccoli, garlic pickles, glass of water, cup of plain herbal tea, zero calorie pop) standing by. They are easy to weigh and log. And (some) may keep you from fainting while you look up entries or at least make your tummy less grumpy and you less hANGRY (hanger does happen with large deficits)

When starting up we don't dip into the family snack bag and do snacks while watching tv pre portion snacks in ziplog bags and keep in other room. Take one snack. Walk to snack eating place in other room. Log. Then eat. Want second? Get up. Add 2 minute walk. Repeat. Want third? Get up. Add 5 minute walk. Repeat. Want more? See what I'm doing there?

Delay is your friend. Non punitive activity can also be you friend... sometimes

The above makes eating out much harder too. Is that a bad thing? Not for weight loss but there is more to life than weight. That said... I've been known to go to the all you can eat fish and chip shop with a scale and play with my food!🤷‍♂️ By the way. 10 years later I go there occasionally. 10+ years ago I was there twice a week or more.

We can go on about entries. But you've got enough to start. Oh: portions and servings on labels and the assumption that your package is one portion.... Sadly: they lie!🥺 And yes, oil spray weigh before and after lets you estimate how many grams of oil you've used. The propellant weight is minimal.

Look at the weight and at the weight of your serving and let the app handle the arithmetic. I admit that since I started logging my use of fractions and percentages has increased insanely!

Likely scenarios so far: inflammation, scale problems including the possibility that your starting weight was higher than you think.

You are not obese. The 250 to 500 Cal deficit correctly applied should do the trick.... correctly applied

kshama2001

MikeDiet2023 wrote: »

springlering62 wrote: »

You mention pain several times. Pain and inflammation can cause temporary water weight gain. Even “simple” pain like the good old duck walk from new exercise can be good for several pounds.

I’m nursing a sprained toe right now. A stupid sprained toe. And I’m up a couple of pounds. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Our very wise and intuitive bodies retain water and direct it to injuries or soreness, for the purposes of healing. Once the pain is gone, ya basically wee it out.

If your weighing and logging is complete and accurate, you are severely under eating. I’m a 61 year old 5’7” female and would be comatose with those few calories. Nourish your body and fuel your activities, please. We don’t want to see you here in a month or two wondering why you’re losing hanks of hair, losing muscle, fatigued, and angry at the world.

This is not to fuss at you. We want you to be successful. We all got off to equally rocky starts til we got the hang of it. Being here long enough to reach that stage is so important.

Do you have a fitness tracker? My Apple Watch rocked my world- literally- and helped me jump the chasm of “I don’t get this” to “oooooooh, that’s how the numbers work”.

Hugs to you, mike!!!

As an aside….No one can message you unless you’ve accepted them as a friend. Mods did that do to a pornbot attack a few years ago.

Well yeah. Pain everywhere is pretty much my body. Okay, well not that extreme but i have a lot of it often.

I will be real. I am supposed to be in calorie deficit to lose weight right? How in the world is rasining my calories going to help me get the fat off? How am I going to be in caloric deficit if i am going to eat more calories than I am supposed to? I have been told by a few people to raise my calories. Okay lets say I do that. Then how am I going to lose weight?
Dont I need to be in calorie deficit?

This is what this is like

me “hi i want to lose weight help”

person “be in calorie deficit thats all there is to it”

Me “okay i have done calorie deficit for 5-6 weeks and gained a pound. its not working”

Person “you should eat more calories”

So which is it? This doesnt even make sense at this point. I am getting conflicting information.

The two most common reasons we see for people not losing weight are:

1. Temporary water weight. New exercise can cause this, as can the stress of undereating. Since you're five weeks in, I'm inclined to discount the new exercise scenario.
2. People eating more than they think. Please don't take this personally. It is very common, as study after study has born out.

Let's address # 2 first. Please change your Diary Sharing settings to Public. In the app, go to Settings > Diary Setting > Diary Sharing > and check Public. Desktop: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

Then I'll give you a link explaining how eating more can lead to the counter-intuitive result of weight loss.

wm3796

When I first started weighing and measuring my food, I realized I was eating nearly 2x as much as I needed for a proper serving size. I also eliminated eating out as much as possible and that also helped.

spiriteagle99

One more question: how often are you weighing yourself? Weight goes up and down significantly on a day to day basis, depending on how much salt we eat, how much water we are retaining to repair sore muscles, how much waste is in our system, etc. If you are only weighing yourself once a week, you may be missing the days that you are down a pound or two, or even more. For losing weight, it helps to look at the long term trend, not the day to day ups and downs.

Be_Brave09

I know you are probably sick of hearing this but I wonder if instead of just riding a bike, you should try to get a variety of workouts in. Like maybe a sprint 8 or just a run. Another thing you could do is strength training, I think the reason your back is hurt is because when you lift weights you have to keep your back straight, if you don’t you can seriously injure your back. Another thing you could do is try to keep a better posture while you are sitting. I also think that you are not eating enough, maybe try to limit things like favorite foods? Try to only eat a small amount of it instead of eating a huge amount for example like eat healthy during the day and instead of eating a huge bowl of ice cream just eat a small amount. As for the pain in your feet, what shoes are you wearing like do they have good padding if they don’t have enough padding in them to support your feet it might be hurting them. Also if you try new exercises be prepared to be sore. Whenever I do a new exercise or one I haven’t done in a long time I feel sore. But being sore is good if your muscles are hurt that means you got a good workout in and that your muscles are getting stronger. So if that is deterring you, it is a good thing. I’m not sure if this will help, I’m not a professional but I am an active person. Good Luck with this!! 🍀

cmriverside

sollyn23l2 wrote: »

MikeDiet2023 wrote: »

springlering62 wrote: »

You mention pain several times. Pain and inflammation can cause temporary water weight gain. Even “simple” pain like the good old duck walk from new exercise can be good for several pounds.

I’m nursing a sprained toe right now. A stupid sprained toe. And I’m up a couple of pounds. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Our very wise and intuitive bodies retain water and direct it to injuries or soreness, for the purposes of healing. Once the pain is gone, ya basically wee it out.

If your weighing and logging is complete and accurate, you are severely under eating. I’m a 61 year old 5’7” female and would be comatose with those few calories. Nourish your body and fuel your activities, please. We don’t want to see you here in a month or two wondering why you’re losing hanks of hair, losing muscle, fatigued, and angry at the world.

This is not to fuss at you. We want you to be successful. We all got off to equally rocky starts til we got the hang of it. Being here long enough to reach that stage is so important.

Do you have a fitness tracker? My Apple Watch rocked my world- literally- and helped me jump the chasm of “I don’t get this” to “oooooooh, that’s how the numbers work”.

Hugs to you, mike!!!

As an aside….No one can message you unless you’ve accepted them as a friend. Mods did that do to a pornbot attack a few years ago.

Well yeah. Pain everywhere is pretty much my body. Okay, well not that extreme but i have a lot of it often.

I will be real. I am supposed to be in calorie deficit to lose weight right? How in the world is rasining my calories going to help me get the fat off? How am I going to be in caloric deficit if i am going to eat more calories than I am supposed to? I have been told by a few people to raise my calories. Okay lets say I do that. Then how am I going to lose weight?
Dont I need to be in calorie deficit?

This is what this is like

me “hi i want to lose weight help”

person “be in calorie deficit thats all there is to it”

Me “okay i have done calorie deficit for 5-6 weeks and gained a pound. its not working”

Person “you should eat more calories”

So which is it? This doesnt even make sense at this point. I am getting conflicting information.

I'm going to irritate some people and say you're probably eating a lot more than you think you are. Really focus on tracking those calories and being honest with yourself.

^^THIS.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10012907/logging-accuracy-consistency-and-youre-probably-eating-more-than-you-think/p1

Sweetzyd

I understand your pain and frustration! I, like you had been tracking my calories and eating around 1200-1400/month for 6+ months, in a deficit and lost nothing. And yes, I measured my foods out and tracked everything. I then started paying more attention to other macros, besides just calories. For instance, sugar and carbs for me. I still stay within my calorie goal, but I stay under my recommended sugar intake for the day. Actually most days I'm only eating half the recommended amount of sugar (around 25 grams). Carbs I try to stay around 70 (no more than 90). I have lost around 7 lbs in 3 weeks! I will also say, 5 years ago I didn't pay attention to carbs and sugar, it was just a calorie deficit and I lost the weight I wanted. I guess as we age, it gets a little harder to lose. Good luck to you and I hope this helps!

Corina1143

Bmi = body mass index. General chart assigning labels like underweight, average, overweight.
Bmr = basal metabolic rate. How many calories you would burn in 24 hours if you slept quietly or were in a coma 24 hours.
Tdee = total daily energy expenditure. Àn estimate by someone who never met you of how many calories you may burn in an average day, using your age, height, weight, estimate of activity.

We're all different, but looks like all of us agree you need more than 1300 calories a day.
Looks like we don't agree on how much we think you eat and how much and what kind of exercise you should do.
The easy answer for your exercise is: if your goal is weight loss, calories eaten count much more than exercise. So for now, do the amount and kind of exercise you like. Don't do things that hurt more than they help.

Concentrate on eating.

Sweetzyd

My comment above should have stated, eating around 1200-1400/day. Not month

loulee997

MikeDiet2023 wrote: »

I have been trying to lose weight for a very long time. I have had many unsuccessful attempts. The only thing that is supposed to work is calorie deficit.
On my latest attempt to lose some weight, which started the beginning of October and is ongoing. I have gained a pound.
I weigh 209 pounds now. I started at 208. I am 6ft tall. I eat 1300 calories a day, which I track exactly in this app. I also walk about 6k steps a day.
Some days my feet hurt and on those days i do my exercise bike.

I am scared I am going to get discouraged and quit again. I dont know what else to do. I need some guidance.

How can i be eating in calorie deficit for 5 weeks and lose nothing but actually gain? It doesnt even make sense right?

This is why I need some help. I dont understand how I have not lost anything but actually gained instead.

The truth is weight loss can sometimes feel like trial and error.

The following items may be the problem. I would always suggest you start with a physical. Make sure you do not have any underlying health issues/

• 1,300 seems slightly low. Undereating can cause just as many issues as overeating. If you are also working out, walking, biking--you may just be eating too low. Bodies can try to hang onto fat reserves if they think you are eating too far under needed calories. It stresses the body in a bad way.
• Are you eating highly processed foods/frozen dinners? They can have a lot of salt and cause water retention.
• Does your family have a history of insulin resistance? Usually, you'd be heavier with IR, but this condition can cause your body to gain weight and make it difficult to lose weight.
• Make sure you are sleeping well and consistently.
• Check for underlying deficiencies or health issues.
• Double-check that your calories and portion sizes are correct.

Honestly, it sounds as though your calories are too low for your height/weight/exercise level. You 'gained a pound', but this may be water weight. Basically, you stayed almost the same. In your case, I believe your issue may be 'undereating' for your activity/size level. But I would HIGHLY recommend you check your portion sizes, calories, and what you are eating. Things like salad dressings, condiments, or cheese portions can really screw you over. Things can be sneaky. If you are truly correct in your portions/calories, I would try cutting sodium-laced foods down and adding additional calories to your day.

If that doesn't work after a month, it may be time to mix up your menu and get a thyroid and vitamin panel from your doctor.

Some people are more sensitive to salt, carbs, or sugar. If nothing else helps, you may want to try reducing sugar or carbs slightly. For SOME people that helps give you a jumpstart... especially if you have IR.