20 days and nothing but a yo-yo

20 days is nothing.

Be patient. If you are accurately logging your food and exercise you will lose.

there's a very good chance your loosing fat and gaining muscle, give it a little while and stay strong, it'll happen

Probably not. It's very hard to gain muscle in a calorific deficit unless you are doing a serious weight training programme.

If you don't have much to lose then it becomes a lot harder. What are your stats? Also why aren't you eating fruit? Fruit is good and an excellent source of fiber. If your diet is mundane then there is more chance you'll get bored of it and end up binging. I would also say add some strength training in, cut back on the cardio and stop weighing yourself. As someone else said, measure yourself because that will give you a much more accurate measurement of your progress.

Don't go by the scale....I am trying to lose 10 pounds, and I have about the same amount of time in as you. I went down 3 right away, then gained one back and now i am stuck at the down 2 pound mark. BUT.......My pants fit better, I feel stronger. I feel less bloated and gross. My back fat love handles are almost gone already. Hoping my pot belly starts shrinking next.....At any rate, as slow as it seems to go, you probably are gaining some muscle, which weighs more than fat. So just because your scale doesn't go down, doesn't mean you are not making progress

1200 calories isn't enough for me either. I think that if you pick your food correctly...lean and clean...you will begin to notice a difference. I (personally) would not eliminate fruit. Yes, it is high in sugar, but it is such a source of important nutrients that the body needs. Stay away from processed foods and be patient. You are at the beginning of a journey even though you don't have much to lose. Hang in there and add me as a friend if you like for support. I only have about 10 more to lose too and it is going so SLOW! I know the frustration :flowerforyou:

What you're eating is important too. Get yourself a copy of the South Beach Diet - not to follow it exactly but to learn about different foods and how they can affect weight loss. It's well written and very informative and you can learn a lot from it. For me, part of my success came from cutting out all the white stuff- white bread, pasta, rice, potatoes - all the high carb/low fiber foods, and substituting other things like high fiber breads, high fiber wraps, and high fiber english muffins for instance, and having small portions of sweet potatoes instead of regular white potatoes. And learning to eat 5 to 6 times a day was good too. Calories are important for sure, but where they come from is equally important. Good luck!

2lbs isn't really a big enough change to be able to determine anything. Personally, I can fluctuate that much from day to day. I've decided to just back away from the scale for the time being, and stick to measurements.

Scales lie and are inaccurate at best. Unless you have a certified scale. My scale said I gained 9 lbs in one day. It will also give as many as 5 different readings right in a row. Other days it gives consistant readings each and every time. If I go on the "Scarsdale Diet, I will lose 12 lbs in 4 days. If I told you how much I lost in a 30 day period years ago when I was young, no-one would beleive me. But the 30 guys I worked with who weighed me each morning on their scale bear witness to the facts.
This program to me, is a health program, not a diet. I look at the advantage of managing sodium, cholesterol and the rest to get healthy. When I get healthy enough, I will start P90X. It requires no weights or special equipment. Starts you out slow and you don't even have to do the exercises correctly. You do what you can @ your own pace. Every 3 weeks or so the program changes and you do something completey different. No boredom. As you progress you do the exercises better and better. Try cutting down your sodium intake to match you calorie intake. 1000Mg Sodium for each 1000 Calories consumed. At least that is what my cardiologist told me. In the first 3 weeks I got off 6 blood pressure pills by managing Sodium.alone. Stay the course. I plan to be where I want to be in a year to a year and a-half. Only 60 lbs to go. LOL!