Is there a reason you are only lifting twice a week? I lift three times and that still gives me plenty of rest days.

What was your diet before EM2WL? Had you been very low calorie for a very long time? Did you do any sort of reset or did you go straight to a 20% cut?

I say I average 2x week because sometimes it's 3, but more often it's 2. Generally, I like to do other stuff like bowling, frisbee, running, hiking, yoga etc., so not all of my activity comes from lifting. In a given week I get 4 "real" workouts and fill the rest of my time with light walking and so forth.

I haven't been on a very low calorie diet for a long time now. Initially (around 2008-ish) I worked down from 200 to 155lbs. I did that by swimming and running about 4 days a week and by eating about 1400-1600 calories per day. It came off relatively easily until I got to 155 about.

After that, I ate more daily (maybe about 1800-2000) because I liked how I looked and that was pretty comfy level of consumption.

My daily activity level declined a LOT when I got a desk job (no more walking to school, biking, etc) but I guess I continued to eat like a more active person. So, when I realized that my weight wasn't magically maintaining itself anymore, I started to count calories again. I dove back in at the 1400 but quickly decided that it was not comfortable and I would rather just work out more but also eat more. I found this group and thought I'd give it a try. I can't say I don't enjoy eating more, but I started back in September or so and I've only gained weight since, despite making activity a priority and pretty much never eating below 1700.

By most accounts (Scooby, F2F, etc) I AM a very active person (get about 6-8 hrs activity per week), but my "background" activity is lower than it once was. Course, I'm older now than when I lost weight previously, and I'm now a good 20lbs heavier than I was back then. About 10 of those lbs have occurred in the past year. The other was the "slow creep" of someone who thinks they're maintaining...but aren't hehe. The compounding factors of stressful job hunting, cross-country move, stressful working conditions, and a now 3-year chronic insomnia problem have also conspired to keep me from finding inner peace and I find that I'm spending SO much of my time obsessing over numbers and calories and so on that...well, it's just really frustrating to make absolutely no progress in losing weight when I'm trying so hard and spending so much of my down time and brain power thinking about it.

But back to positive note!! - Today I was trying on this bridesmaid dress and sort of moving my arms about and I saw a line has formed where my tricep and bicep meet on the top/back of my arm...SCORE! Also, my calves look good. So, I guess my extremities are getting muscular.

Thanks for reading my vent. If you sat through the whole thing, well, I appreciate it.

I think I'll feel better tomorrow. Will need to take the advice of an earlier post and possibly get my RMR tested. Maybe got to a BodPod and get the fat% nailed down too. Maybe that would be a better way to gauge progress.

It is pretty all over the place for sure. I do weigh all the food and count out my snack nuts, measure my wine, etc etc. I've been at this forever it seems. No "unlogged snacking". But it seems like anytime we go out to eat, I end up going over my limit, so I try to compensate by having less on another day. Mathematically, I (want to) think that my average for the week is more important than my day to day. But obviously, that may be flawed thinking considering my lack of results.

I've tried variations of "logging all the exercise calories and eating them back" or "logging only 1 cal burned and eating at my -20% number".

As far as protein....yeah. This is something that I have managed to increase from about 40 g/day avg to 80-100/day relatively regularly. But I have not found a comfortable way to get the 1g/lb LBM number or the 30% of calories. It's a huge amount of protein for me. I don't want to eat meat for 3 meals a day and milk/yogurt are sadly no longer options. I've tried powders, but they're expensive and although I enjoy them, I save them for weightlifting days to save $$ (the cheaper versions have lactose in them, so gotta spring for the isolates). Usually, I am ending up just going way over on fat and not getting anywhere near my protein goals. Maybe it will be easier when my total calories to eat are lower.

Anyways, thanks for all the comments everyone. I know that consistency is the key. I do actually eat the same stuff for lunch and breakfast consistently. Dinner is a wild card though. I also get some form of exercise almost every day of the week.
I feel like I am coming away from this with a resolution to decrease calories further because probably my TDEE is lower than what I've calculated.
Maybe my version of exercising hard just doesn't burn that many calories. I probably should get more cardio in my life again too. I'm a stocky little person. My peasant genes probably just don't want to give up their precious lard layer, even in times of plenty.

Thanks heybales. I will drop some more and see what happens! I think my body is pretty efficient at holding onto its reserves. Even when I've been very active (hiking all day for field work, etc) my weight doesn't drop easily. So maybe I'm one of those people for which calories in is absolutely the most important thing to control and exercise hardly makes a dent.

boo :grumble: