Daily weight fluctuations - looking for advice

You've gotten some really good advice on this thread.

Some of the valuable information I have culled over my 60 pound weightloss journey:

1 - Weigh only once a week. This is especially true if you work out. Your body builds up fluids as you work out and this can make your weight fluctuate quite a bit. Once you learn to not freak out about those daily fluctuations, then you can go back to wieghing more often as you like. But it sounds like you're not quite there yet.

2 - Eat enough. Google BMR calculators and find out how many calories you really should be eating. You will not lose weight if you are not eating enough. With 5-6 workouts a week, my bet is you are not eating close to what you should be.

3 - I am also a firm believer in the so-called "cheat day" every so often. When I plateau, I find that if I up my calories for just one meal, I'll lose a pretty good chunk in the coming week. You have to shake things up a bit.

4 - Allow your body to "correct" itself. After speaking with a couple of doctors, I've learned that your body does need to do a correction. You may go 2-3 weeks with only a small or no loss. But you have to hang in there and not do anyting drastic. Eventually it will do a course correction and you will get back on track.

Good luck to you!
Ann

Thanks but I am still a little confused. The MFP guided "goal" has me at net 1320 calories per day in order to attain my goal of 2lbs loss per week. So if my average workout is 400 calories, my daily total calorie intake should be about 1720?

Yes, that's how MFP is set up to work, otherwise it would have given you a higher goal, having factored in your planned exercise.

As you read around, you may hear people saying they do "TDEE-20%" or something similar. It is possible to customise your MFP goal, and a lot of people do that to give themselves a higher goal, and then don't eat back exercise calories. They just eat a flat amount regardless of whether or not they exercise that day. If you like the sound of that better than the "exercise calorie" way, I'd recommend reading up about BMR and TDEE so that you can find the optimal number of calories to eat. Otherwise, it might be simpler just to stick with MFP's goal, at least in the beginning.

You may also find that if you are using MFP's exercise database, it may not give you an accurate estimate for your calorie burn. I personally haven't had a problem with it, but a lot of people find that MFP can overestimate calorie burn, and they choose to only eat back a portion of the exercise calories, to allow for error.

There is enough error in weighing that if you don't have a sufficient number of data points, you really don't know what is going on. The key is to not take any single datapoint seriously. You need a bunch so you can create a trend.

What he said. It's why I weigh myself every day. Need to keep track of trends!

Anyway, as for the original post, you might be doing too much with too little calories. You don't (or shouldn't) work out so much if you're in a big calorie deficit.