Girl with Lupus, plateauing and scared

Today is my 75th day with My Fitness Pal. Fairly rapidly (within the first month and a half), I lost about 15 lbs and felt really good about it. But, since then, I've plateaued. Majorly. I haven't lost a single ounce. Today, my weight was up one pound (but I think that's natural womanly fluctuation).

But I just don't know what to do. I *always* am under my calories. Always. And even though I have lupus and some days I can barely move, I exercise whenever I can. I know some of you do maybe 90 minutes a day. For me, I've only made it up to 20 minutes so far, but I keep pushing myself to do more.

I've read people on here that say exercise doesn't matter, as long as you balance your calories. I don't know if that's true. But I'm gonna exercise regardless, because, as a lupus patient, it's 6x more important for me to improve mine than it is for the average person without chronic illness.

I've thought about something recently about why I may be plateauing and I want ya'll's take on it...

I set my weightloss goal to 2lbs a week. I'm not much of an eater, so I had no problem staying under the 1460 calorie limit. But I repeat: I'm not much of my eater. Sometimes, when I total my calories, I find that I'm still under the 1200 minimum and that gives me such shame. I put a lot of pressure on myself to fall exactly between 1200 and 1400, yet I'm scared to even approach 1460 -- like that automatically means that I'll gain the weight back or something.

You're probably wondering why I gained weight at all if I'm not much of an eater. The answer to that is the high doses of corticosteroids I had to take for my lupus from ages 19-22 (I'm 23 now). Because I was put on them so much, I developed Cushing's syndrome. I was Cushingnoid until about 9 months after cutting out steroids entirely.

So, I have two theories about why I'm not losing weight and I want to know whether these are sane or not.

Theory #1) I have killed my metabolism by getting less than 1400 calories a day for at least a year.

Theory #2) Cushing's syndrome inherently makes you big. Was it simply impossible to lose weight before the Cushings went away? And since it only went away recently, I should count THAT as the beginning of my weightloss journey?

Maybe it's a combo of both. I dunno.

I know that I never seem to nearly approach the carb limit for the day; conversely, I accidentally go over my fat limit because cheese is my guilty pleasure (and many low fat varieties taste like sugar to me). But once again: I'm ALWAYS under my calorie limit. I don't think I went over since my first two days on MFP.

And here's where fear comes into it: I'm constantly bombarded with doctors telling me my weight is dangerous. I know it's not healthy to weigh 263lbs. But telling me how dangerous it is doesn't help me lose it. It just makes me feel scared and bad about not losing it fast enough -- ya know?

I know some of you have been overweight your whole lives. I have not. Before the prednisone, I weighed 100lbs. Back then, I ate like a pig and had a tremendous appetite. Prednisone made me never hungry, yet gain weight. It turned my body upside down. When I weighed 100lbs, I fought tooth and nail to gain weight; now I'm fighting just as hard to loose it.

And I'm scared it won't happen for me. Everyone around me -- family, friends, doctors -- thinks I'm not losing fast enough. I have so much pressure and I'm not a crier, but I feel like crying. I really do.

I just need some sane advice from some calm, rational people, people who know what I've been through and can offer wisdom instead of fear and put downs.

Thank you for reading.