Plateau...help!

If your ticker is accurate you have less than 20 lbs to lose. If you set MFP to lose .5 to 1 lb a week, eat your calorie goal, and your exercise calories you might start to see the scale move. MFP expects you to eat those burned calories back since your loss deficit is already built in. I'm guessing, without seeing your diary, that at least part of the cause is your exercising 5-6 days a week and only eating 1200 calories. Depending on your burn you could be giving your body very little to work with.

Go hard on the strength building exercises. Building lean muscle is the ONLY thing that will reliably increase your metabolism for the long term, and that, for many people, is the key to breaking through plateaus.

Don't worry about getting bulky, if that's something you would worry about. Women don't build muscle the same way as men. Not naturally, anyway.

Oh, and I'm just going to reaffirm that you MUST eat your exercise calories, or at least most of them.

1200 calories worked for me for 2 1/2 months then I got stuck even gained a lb. A week ago I went up to 1600 calories and I have already lost a 1 1/2 since then. I'm 5'7" 167 lbs so similar to you.

I have another calorie question. I went to the website indicated in this thread which said I should eat around 1600 calories a day to lose 1 lb. a week. Does this mean I should eat 1600 calories period, or do I need to eat the 1600 plus the calories I burn exercising. I do an ifit workout on the treadmill 5 days a week, for 30 minutes and burn around 300 calories.

This is so confusing!

Anytime you enter your exercise level into the equation you don't eat those calories back. It's giving you your BMR and TDEE numbers . The bottom number where it says "To lose 1 pound per week means that you have to consume...." that's the number you want to be eating at. You can still log your exercise if you want to track it, just enter it in as 1 calorie burned.

Thanks for the clarification. I knew there was no way I could eat 1900 healthy calories a day. I know it will take some time to get my metabolism straightened out, but I will keep working at it.

That's not true at all.. I eat 1900 calories a day

I'm not too sure what "healthy" means to you but it works for me!

ok nobody go yelling at me but just want to clarify: If we use calculators such as the one given above we should not eat exercise cals back? Basically go by food intake not net intake? See this always confuses me. I think my problem have been overeating...I'm eating 1800ish plus half or more of my exercise cals because I thought I needed to net 1800ish after working out.

I need help too. I'm a 53 year old male, sedentary. I started using MFP in late February of last year. I log in every day, and have the app on my iPhone, so I log every single thing I eat. I also weigh in pretty much daily, though I travel a lot and don't usually have a scale when I'm not home.

I'm not very knowledgeable about my metabolism and that may be the root of my problem. I thought I would loose weight as long as I ate less than what MFP tells me is my calorie goal.

I progressed pretty well between February and October. I slowly but steadily lost 1/2 to 1 lb every week (blurring out daily ups and downs) but then hit a wall after I lost about 22 lbs. Since October, I've pretty much maintained my weight and don't know how to get beyond my plateau. I have not changed my eating or exercise habits from when I started with the program. I drink 8-12 glasses of water/day. Water made a difference when I was first starting out - not enough water intake - no weight loss, even eating fewer calories.

MFP is telling me right now that I should be eating 1870 calories/day, after having set my goal at 1 lb. per week with my current statistics. I typically eat 100-400 calories less than that. LEss than once a month, I might eat a 100-200 calories more. I do eat whatever MFP tells me I've burned when I exercise. I don't exercise regularly or often, though.

Is this what is causing me my problem? Has my body become accustomed to say 1,600 calories/day and won't keep burning fat unless I actually start eating more? Seems counterintuitive to me.

If I understand some of the comments here, perhaps I should treat the recommended calories as sort of a floor or fixed target that really shouldn't be altered by much in either direction. Thus, I should increase my intake to get as close as possible to 1,870. The Harris Benedict link above says I should be eating 1,903 calories. I guess I could target somewhere between those two numbers.

I just started checking into this issue today. I'm going to be looking for more information on my physiology to better understand what is happening.

it's your 1200 calories a day.

Eat more. I too am 5'5 and am losing while eating 1450 a day. I started at 1200 and was starving the entire time. I went up to 1300 and plateaued for 5 weeks while at 1300. up to 1400 and the weight was flying off again. Now i'm getting closer to maintenance because I've almost lost all my weight so I'm upping my calories every 2 weeks or so until I hit my 1700-1800 maintenance (I'm going off my fitbit, my average total burned is 1811 a day).

Is the 1450 total or net after calculating exercise calories burned?