the scale wont budge

I agree. It's more important to lose mass than to lose weight. Muscle is heavier than fat, and also takes up less space. You might be burning fat and building muscle, in which case you may find that you weigh MORE when all is said and done. So in your case you might want to focus on body part measurement rather than what the scale says.

It does take time for sure! Try weighing yourself only once a week, so you don't psych yourself out when the needle stays put. I'm having the same issue. Been working out since Nov and still at 172. But I feel way better and I'm not as winded when I work out, so I know something's changing!

It does take time, but for some of us you can not come in under your goals. I have to eat my 1200 calories plus about half of my exercise calories to burn lbs. It took me a month of hard and I do mean HARD workouts and not loosing any weight to find this out. While my inches were goign my lbs were not because I didn't jsut loose anything it either went to muscle or it stayed as fat:sad: but did not fall off. After my trainer told me this I lost 7 lbs in the next 4 weeks:smooched:

Dont get down on your self jsut play with your eatign and exercise and you will find the right combo!

It's true that the same volume of muscle weighs more than that volume of fat but it's very hard to put on muscle mass. If you are doing strength training and not doing anything with your diet to bulk up, you might put on 1 lb. of muscle mass a month. So you aren't putting on 3 lb. of muscle your first week of working out. It's more likely to be a water retention issue. When you first start an exercise program, your muscles release their stored glycogen. It takes 4 lb. of water for every lb. of stored glycogen. So, you might lose a big amount in water weight. But, after a while, your body realizes that this new activity level is permanent and it starts burning fat instead to get energy. So it puts the glycogen back into your muscles and it has to put the water back too.

This is why people often lose 5 lb. the first week on a diet but nothing the second week. The first week they are using up glycogen and releasing water and the second week they are burning more fat and putting the water back.

This is also why I wouldn't worry about one week of no loss -- it could be that TOM or it could be because your muscles are being repaired or maybe you ate a lot of salt before you weighed. Water retention and release can cause your weight to fluctuate as much as 5 pounds when the weight you care about -- the fat and lean tissue mass -- hasn't changed at all. But if you find that you eat what MFP says to eat and you don't lose weight for several weeks, then I'd consider that MFP isn't giving you accurate numbers. After all, it is only estimating your BMR and the calories it says you burn exercising is an estimate too -- one that doesn't take into account heart rate so it could be wildly inaccurate.

I found that, until I got into awesome shape, the online formulas on all the sites were wildly over-estimating my calories. They'd tell me that I should be losing 2 lb. a week when I was only losing 1 lb. for example. It's because my BMR was lower than average for my age. Now it's higher than average and, if I ate what MFP said to eat, I'd be skin and bones. :laugh: But, the point is, it's an estimate and you have to do what works for your body, not the average body.

Are you using a tape measure???? I can't stress what an important tool that is! When the scale isn't moving I bust out the tape measure and seeing the inches that I have lost that week makes me keep going!

thats so so true its what i go by really to be honest scales have stalled on me now so ill know by measurement :flowerforyou: