frustration to the point of tears.. help!

Open up your diary....are you eating foods with lots of sodium?
Don't give up....no tears!!!!

I suspect you're building muscle.

Get a tape measure!!! I worked out and ate right for 2 months didn't lose anything in pounds, but I lost like 8 inches all over my body!!! Hang in there!!

I have been on and off for a couple of years now, my weight goes up and down, but on average it has not really changed at all. I know where you are coming from being frustrated.

However.... The responses you have had so far say it all, its more about what the tape measure says, not the scales.

Are you weighing your food? If not, I would guess that you are drastically under estimating what you are actually eating. Get yourself a food scale and weigh everything out. Don't forget to count what you drink (pop, alcohol, gatorade, etc) and if you really want to get down to it, condiments on your food as well. Remember, the more important thing is to be at your weekly calorie goal more than your daily calorie goal for the long term. You will have bad days, you will have good days, as long as they average out to where you need to be, the diet will work in the long run.

Also, gaining muscle mass...5 lbs of muscle in 6 weeks would be amazing...especially at the calorie intake she is talking about and the fact that she's a girl (no offense ladies, but it's the truth, the hormones just are not usually there). Plus she is doing Tae Bo, not lifting, so to gain 5 lbs in 6 weeks would be even that much more amazing, especially at 20 minutes a day... Not trying to be negative, but I've got to imagine there's something else going on here.

There very well could be some water weight going on here due to hormones, sodium intake, etc as other people have stated. I would adjust your MFP to track that on your food page and see what your sodium intake is.

Just another piece of advice, if you are still gaining weight and you are actually weighing and eating 1100-1300 calories day, you might want to get to a doc and get checked out since there could be something going on there that needs to be corrected with your health.

Get your body mass and fat content measured.
Get on the scale NO MORE than once every 2 weeks and NOT during your period. Daily up and down will drive you crazy and de-motivate you.
Be more concerned with losing inches and not pounds. Muscle weighs more than fat.
My wife has lost 60lbs. There were a few months when she went up but her lean muscle mass was increasing and fat percentage decreasing. You want this!
Variety in your workouts is important. Don't stick with just one thing.
Eating more is absolutely correct. It's like Goldilocks & the 3 bears. Too little is bad. Too much is bad. In general, you should never go below 1200. High quality protein will help curb cravings and speed muscle recovery and it's not stored as fat like carbs are. Folks here will argue about whether starvation response is real. I've done my own research and believe that it is. Too little calories will teach your body to hold onto everything you put in. Just enough will allow it to release waste.
Stick with it!

Same here. You may be gaining muscle mass. Never go just on weight. Take measurements. I am stalled at my current weight but I am still losing inches and showing tighter muscle mass so I am happy. The weight will continue to come off. Based on my past measurements, I will stall at a weight but lose inches during that stall, then I guess my body equalizes and I start losing weight again. But I also do cardio circuits and change up my program when I stall. Keep the body guessing.

^This^ ... I haven't lost any weight yet and I've been working at it for 4 months but my measurements have changed my BMI has changed my clothes fit differently and I see some tone and definition when I look in the mirror. No tears don't give up ...you didn't put the weight on over night it won't come off over night (do give up soda sugar and salt if you haven't already though) :-) GOOD LUCK!!!

I agree, could be muscle gained or water. My boyfriend is a personal trainer and he usually tells clients to put less emphasis on the scale and more on inches and how your body looks to you, or how your clothes fit.

Carry on exercising and tape measure every month.
I hover between weights, a pound here and a pound there but I measure myself and although my weight has gone UP I've LOST a dress size or two depending what I'm wearing.

Hang in there girly

I did a lot of reading and researched the TDEE / BMR numbers, etc. as I had been eating the recommended 1200 cals for months. I did really well at first and lost 7 lbs pretty quickly. then nada.... I couldn't figure out why since I was only eating between 800 - 1200 cals per day net. Doesn't a large deficit equal large weight loss? Not for me...

After spending a lot of time on different websites, and doing different calculators, here is what has worked for me:

http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator/

I didn't want to base my numbers on exercise that I MIGHT do, even though I'm consistent, so I factored in my TDEE at the Sedentary rate - 15% (I don't have much to lose).

I am 5'5" and currently 136 lbs. My BF is 22.7 % and am 40 years old. I went to the Scooby Workshop website to calculate my calorie needs for the day and use those numbers. If you know your bodyfat % then a more accurate calculation is using the Katch-McArdle formula according to them. These stats give me:

BMR - 1405
TDEE - 1686 (at Sedentary)
Calorie Requirements to lose 0.5 lb per week - 1433 (this is at a 15% deficit)

Sooooo, what I did after that is reset my MFP daily goals at 1450 cals per day NET! I eat back ALL of my exercise calories.

The second thing I did was purchase a HRM to accurately guage what I was burning during my workouts. You would be surprised at the discrepancies between estimates! I do an intense bootcamp class 3 x per week and run on my off days. Either a few miles or sprint intervals, depending on how I feel that day. Depending on what we are doing in bootcamp, my burn could be anywhere from 240 cals to 350 cals....WAY under what I thought!!! If I was to eat back what I GUESSED I was burning, then I would be eliminating any deficit I had for the day. Keep in mind that the muscle you're building will burn more calories at rest, and you get a great 'afterburn' from weights that will last for hours after, so even though you're not burning as large of an amount during your workout, the after effects far outweigh doing just straight cardio!!! Heavy lifting is the best thing you can do for your body!! I used to do both on the same day, but have stopped doing that. A little bit of something 6-7 days per week is better than a huge amount of exercise 3-4 days per week. (for me anyway).

The last thing I do is stop stressing and trust the process. I eat whatever I want and try to make sure that it fits into my calories for the WEEK. I've been eating Halloween chocolate like it's going out of style (yesterday that's all I had for lunch), and I was down a half lb this morning. I was way over my calories on Sunday, and was under Monday and yesterday. The little weekly graph on MFP shows me at an average of 1453 cals per day for the week so far.

I weigh myself every morning, but only log the progress if it's less than the last entry. sometimes there will be 2 weeks of no change, but then all of a sudden there's a 1 lb loss showing on my graph. If I take the total loss and divide it by the amount of weeks, then I AVERAGE a 0.5 lb loss per week. This way I can see the trend with water retention, etc. I don't stress if it's up.

This method has been easily sustainable for me....slow and steady with zero deprivation!!

Hope this helps, and good luck to you!!