what am I doing wrong??????????????

I think you are over estimating the amount of cals burned in exercise.

Lots of "quick adds" in your diary so it is hard to determine how clean you are eating. Plus quick adds are more likely to be inaccurate, so you may be underestimating cals eaten.

If I were you, I'd start being much more attentive to logging food and be a little more conservative in estimates of cals burned. You'll end up consuming less cals, but from 1,800 you have room to cut down a bit.

Your ticker says you've lost 4 pounds. If that's since January 4th then you've lost 4 pounds in 5 weeks, which is great! Keep your chin up - this takes time!

I think you need some help with what to eat. Just a quick look at a few days of your diary I see you are eating deep fried fast food, crescent rolls, lots of butter and there is a lot of quick added calories. It's great that you are exercising, but you can't out run a bad diet. I would be happy to give you some suggestions if you want to friend me. Research clean eating, I'm a huge advocate of that and I am always telling people to try it. I can almost promise you that if you start eating clean, and keep up the exercise you will lose weight. And you will feel better physically.
I'm not saying you need to give up the crescents and fried stuff for good, but they should be once in a while treats and not the norm.

This has to be a troll right?

Just look at the diary for yesterday 3 glazed doughnuts as a snack? Deep fried Oysters for lunch?
208 cals over target, even after working off 735...and then asking what they're doing wrong...this can't be real. :noway: :noway: :noway:
Even the most nutritionally uneducated person wouldn't ponder this for long, after eating all that crap consistently.

I kind of thought the same thing when I read the 5 crescent rolls, but decided to give the benefit of the doubt with a helpful answer!

3 glazed donuts yesterday....hmmmmmm

First don't get discouraged! Your clothes are fitting better so you are making progress. I agree with many here 1800 calories is a lot and you might want to reduce that. I did take the time to look at your food diary. I'm not really sure how to help with your choices because a lot of your entries are quick added calories. One thing that happens with the quick added calories is that you do not track the fat, carbohydrates, and proteins that way. So you may be consuming more fat and carbohydrates than you realize. So in the long and short of it, be patient and be cognitive of the types of calories you are eating.

Yes a calorie is a calorie, but you need to feed your body the right nutrients also. It will react better from a balanced diet. Keep up your exercising and keep up your good work!

GET OFF THE SCALE!

WOMEN LOSE %BF FIRST AND MEASUREMENTS

%BF - WILL TELL YOU HOW MUCH
MEASUREMENTS - WILL TELL YOU WHERE
SCALE - WILL TELL YOU WHEN THE ABOVE TWO HAVE AREADY DONE THEIR JOB

WHICH MEANS - BY THE TIME THE SCALE TELLS YOU, YOU ALREADY HAD TO GO OUT AND BUY SMALLER PANTALONES.

WHY DO MEN LOSE WEIGHT ON THE SCALE FASTER - BECAUSE WE HAVE MORE LEAN MUSCLE MASS, OUR %BF IS ALREADY NATURALLY LOWER. THIS IS WHY A GUY WITH THE SAME %BF AS A WOMAN VISIBLE LOOKS FATTER.

Your on the right track....pants aren't tight etc.. get you %BF and measure.. Track that every 3-4 weeks....GET OFF THE SCALE

STOP SHOUTING :flowerforyou:

Everyone's metabolism is different. I will be 57 in March so we are close in age and it's more difficult for us to lose weight.

I am 5'9" and over 35 years I had ballooned to 228. MFP set my caloric intake as 1500 calories per day but usually close out each day with 1300 calories or less. I weigh once a week, same day and time around 6:00 am before I even take a drink of water. Things I have learned ... Log everything that goes in your mouth. It's shocking how a little taste of this or that can add up to a lot of calories. I never "drink" my calories ... No more Starbucks for me and I would rather have a lean piece of grilled chicken on salad greens than drink a slim fast drink. There is something about the satisfaction of CHEWING

Don't get discouraged ... We didn't get into this situation overnight and we can't lose the weight overnight.

I can see a number of issues here -

1. As a more mature female, your calorie requirements will be lower than most. 1800 seems quite high, and is actually higher than the baseline I set myself as a mid-thirties male. I'd guess that 1800 is probably around 'maintenance' calories for you - a guess borne out by your lack of progress. I'm happy to help you figure out some numbers if you'll share some details. My guess would be that around 1600 could be a good place for you to start.

2. Your exercise calories look over-estimated. You take as many calories per hour for gardening as I take for running. Do not log calories for an activity if you already factored it into your activity level. Only log calories for exercise above and beyond your normal activity level, and I suggest you scale them back a little from the estimates you are using.

3. Your nutrition in general is poor. You get little food for the amount of calories you consume. Eat more fresh, unprocessed, less calorie-dense food, and you'll find you can eat a lot more food for your calories, and hence get significantly better nutrition.

4. Too many fat calories, too few protein calories. Pick up some more lean proteins. Fat isn't the enemy by any means, but make it good fat, and take in plenty of protein with it. Grilled chicken, tinned tuna and no fat greek yogurt are all great sources of protein without 'bad' fat. Almonds and oily fish are a great source of protein with 'good' fat.

There are more experienced members than me around, but if you'd like some help planning things out, feel free to drop me a note.

have you looked at what your eating for carbs. Also, you may be gaining muscle and that weighs more then fat.

The entire userbase of MFP and westernized populations as a whole need a total reality check on the hilarious concept of counting calories. Biology does not work like math. It works like biology. That said, I still like MFP for its usefulness as a food diary, but definitely NOT as a weight loss or health tool. And here's why:

Please do yourselves all a favor and start the re-education process by visiting this site:
SlimIsSimple.org

Then move on and delve into this stuff, for starters:

Good Calories, Bad Calories - Gary Taubes (probably too technical for most)
Why We Get Fat, And What To Do About It - Gary Taubes (the better choice of his two books, for now)
The Smarter Science Of Slim - Jonathan Bailor
JumpstartMD videos on YouTube with Peter Attia presenting on the Ketogenic intake
TheLivinLowCarbShow.com and Livin La Vie Da Low Carb podcast by Jimmy Moore
YouTube Channel "eenfeldt" (The Diet Doctor)
Dr. Johnny Bowden
Dr. Terry Wahl
NuSI.org ("The Manhattan Project of Nutrition") Headed by Dr. Peter Attia and Gary Taubes

This stuff needs to get out there and we need to simply acknowledge that biology does not work like math (ie. calorie counting), biology works like biology (calorie QUALITY and COMPOSITION). In doing so, you will save your own lives and naturally return to the fat-burning, slim humans you were born to be.

Funny how everyone who says that calorie counting doesn't work (in the face of tremendous evidence that it does) is trying to sell you something...

It comes down to calories in vs calories out. Try Shapesense.com s website to approximate your Daily Caloric Expenditure caluculator. For every 3500 calorie deficit your body experiences, you lose a pound. Then add in you excercise calories too. Make sure to use a heart rate monitor to tell you how many calories you burn during excerise. Machine's can be way off if they aren't basing it on heartrate.

So, for example my BMR is 1800 a day for a sedantary lifestyle. That is how many calories my body needs to function, digest food, and the little bit of moving I do during the day. If I only eat 1200 calories I am at a 600 cal deficit so far for the day. If I work out and burn 400 calories I am now at a 1000 cal deficit. It is a lot about the math.

It comes down to calories in vs calories out.

Then, please, with all due respect, start by watching SlimIsSimple.org (a completely free, public-service driven video, not trying to sell you anything) and see why if we held what the calorie deficit/surplus theory of weight gain and weight loss to the test, would mean that the typical American, who is consuming an average of 300 calories more per day now than he/she did 40 years ago (statistical fact, very Google-friendly and you can pick your reference of choice) should weigh over 1,000 pounds each, calculated on the same math you refer to. And we obviously that is not the case, so something doesn't add up. In this case, it's calorie counting.

I am not saying that it doesn't work, just that it's a poor way to lose weight if being healthful is at all a priority.

And apart from Taubes's books, which you definitely don't need to buy to gain access to the same basic info elsewhere, all that other stuff is free. Perhaps it would do you a bit of good to check some of it out, with maybe more of an open mind?

The entire userbase of MFP and westernized populations as a whole need a total reality check on the hilarious concept of counting calories.

Perhaps you could try opening your mind a little first, and the rest would follow?

I eat very well, thank you. Mostly fresh foods, very little processed. I don't need books and websites to tell me that. I just used to eat too much. Counting calories brought that into line, and I've lost 40 pounds. Counting calories sure isn't the last word in nutrition, but without some method of matching what you eat to what you burn, weight loss is a crap shoot. If you already happily eat a healthy amount of food (I won't say calories) to maintain your weight, then kudos to you. But not everyone does, and they need a method of moderating their intake. Calorie counting is about the easiest way to do that until you get a really good handle on the calorie densities of various foods.

Perhaps you could try opening your mind a little first, and the rest would follow?

I eat very well, thank you. Mostly fresh foods, very little processed. I don't need books and websites to tell me that. I just used to eat too much. Counting calories brought that into line, and I've lost 40 pounds. Counting calories sure isn't the last word in nutrition, but without some method of matching what you eat to what you burn, weight loss is a crap shoot. If you already happily eat a healthy amount of food (I won't say calories) to maintain your weight, then kudos to you. But not everyone does, and they need a method of moderating their intake. Calorie counting is about the easiest way to do that until you get a really good handle on the calorie densities of various foods.

But therein lies the rub. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself how hundreds of generations of humans, pre-1950, managed to stay so generally fit, so non-diabetic, so simply healthy, without ever consciously taking note of how much and/or how often they were eating, much less not even knowing what the concept of a calorie was?

I'm not arguing that calories-in, calories-out doesn't "work". Heck, it may be all you need to keep your weight down. But how naturally sustainable is it and what is it actually doing for your metabolic health, versus maybe taking a look at the makeup of *what* your eating? What would happen if you filled yourself so full of high quality, horomonally friendly food that you were simply too full to eat any more? Might it just be that instead of counting calories, you could just eat when you're hungry and eat until your full? I think you may find that to be the case if you gave it a shot.