Advice please! Wt loss, cardio, strngth training?

Thoughts:

1400 is probably too little, which could contribute to your "surplus" days. How much are you eating over when you eat over? Best thing to do is figure out your TDEE (like here: http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html), subtract 20%, and then either
* eat that same amount every day, or
* set yourself two goals, eating more on workout days and less on rest days, so that you're averaging that number over a week
whichever makes you feel less hungry. (I like the second option, personally, but other people like the consistency of the first one.)

If you didn't exercise before, you might build a little muscle and you can definitely make your muscles stronger. Assuming you're actually eating at a deficit, you definitely won't gain fat.

And it wouldn't hurt to up your protein even more than that, say around 100g/day. (I'm just totally guessing on your LBM, but 100 lbs is probably around the right range.)

That TDEE is what you need, on average, every day for the activity level you picked. So you'd either eat 1770 every day, or something like 1550 on rest days and 2000 on workout days (aiming to average 1770/day over the week).

Also vegetarian, so I sympthize about the protein thing. I supplement, but I can do 100 without the shake - tempeh and nutritional yeast are good too.

I have a doctor that's full time specialty is weight loss and cognitive behavioral therapy. He told me that MFP (and all the other apps as well as the cardio machines at the gym) are overestimating the amount of calories burned during exercise. He said if you were to put on a "VO2" mask and actually measure what's being burned it's going to be less. With that in mind, he said that I should ignore the "net" calories and try to stay under my daily calorie goal with what I eat. Exercise calories should be treated as a bonus, or at the very least cut in half.

So, if your diet is 1400 and MFP says you burned 600, you might not want to allow yourself to have 2000 calories that day. Take this with a grain of salt and use it as you like, but if you run into problems and it seems like you should be losing weight and you're not this could be one of the causes.

As far as your workout goes, if you're looking to lose weight you have to burn calories, and that's mostly cardio. Strength training helps tone but also helps you burn calories at rest. With that in mind I think you should probably be 60-75% cardio. I've been having a lot of success with high impact aerobics classes/bootcamp classes/circuit trainings classes. You get both strength training and cardio with these and you burn a lot of calories.

My only expertise is a lifetime of battling my weight and having seen numerous doctors/nutrionists/trainers over the years. Since starting about a week and a half ago on MFP (which I LOVE, total game changer for me), I've already lost about 13 lbs.

Hope that helps!

What does tempeh and nutritional yeast taste like?

Tempeh is really good - sort of a dense umami flavor, but only if you cook it right - look for advice on Post Punk Kitchen. (Steam then fry or grill, generally, but they'll have better tips.) If you don't it can be kind of bitter or musty tasting.

Nutritional yeast is kind of a nutty cheesy flavor - PPK will have a ton of advice on using it too. My kids love it on pretty much everything - pasta, vegetables, rice, whatever. (I have caught the 3-year-old opening the jar to eat it with a spoon, but I don't really recommend that personally.)

And I wouldn't recommend a ton of cardio either - I do about 3 20-minute sessions a week and that's plenty. But I really enjoy weightlifting (which I do 5-6x/week for 30-60 minutes at a time). If you think running is superawesome funtime, then don't *not* do it. The exercise that will give you the best results is the one you'll do consistently.