I've gained weight

I didn't start losing weight until I got a food scale. I was way off on my guesses.

I'm sure this does not account for your stall in weight loss, but two things caught my eye on your diary, the calories for the orange juice and the fried potatos seemed low. A quick input on 1 c. fried potatos (in light oil) came up on MFP as 240 calories, as compared to your entry & since one medium orange (not the juice) is 60 cals, I wouldn't know what to enter. Make sure you enter your calories correctly.

These are really good points. OP has a cup of homemade fried potatoes showing up at 20 calories - that's off by 10x. Whole bunch of homemade entries. Non-standard or unlikely serving sizes (0.25 bowl of noodles, 1/8 cup mac n cheese, 1 tbsp trail mix).

OP isn't eating particularly low calories to start with. Simple calculation errors or bad MFP entries (there are a lot) could put her at maintenance calories, which would be entirely consistent with her results.

I think this is your answer, OP. You need to be more careful about recording calories. Since you aren't eating at at giant deficit (not recommended, so good job!) you don't have a ton of wiggle room, so you have to log accurately. Digital food scale + less generic entries + For the love of all that is good and holy don't stop weight training, bc that's not the problem. Would be my advice. You don't need to cut out carbs. Check out the Eat, Train, Progress group as someone else mentioned. Friend me if you like! Good luck!

I looked at your diary. First thing I saw was enough for me to answer your question. You had 1 cup home made potatoes cooked in oil - you had it logged as 20 calories and 17 grams of protein. WHAAAAAAT?

You need to get more precise with your tracking. You are likely eating way more than you think.

I have trained many women and in my experience I feel weight lifting should be done when you have lost weight you want and need to tone up gain muscle I am a fan of lean muscle look and this is my opinion but many women love results when they do that. Up your cardio now weights later!

Why would you want to train away muscle mass to go through the work of trying to put it back on, which is extremely difficult?

When you eat at a deficit, you lose muscle as well as fat. Strength training while eating at a deficit helps prevent some of that loss and preserves muscle tissue. This helps to preserve metabolism and get more appealing end result after weight loss. Not sure why anyone would want to diet/cardio train their muscle away then work to build it back after it's gone?

^^^I would take this advice all day everyday.

See the problem with my food entries is that I'm not sure what is going in my food. I'm currently volunteering with a Buddhist community and they provide my meals for me. Which are all vegetarian and made-from scratch. I usually get estimates from our chefs but they aren't exactly weighing everything themselves. The only thing that's in my control is portions portions and portions! And of course, what I eat....

Ok that makes it harder.

I recommend to do some fun reading on Metabolic damage, water weight retention and refeed meals (while on calorie deficit).

If you are gaining weight, it means you eat too much. Eat 25% less than now, and you should see a difference.

They provide lunch and dinner Monday - Saturday. And I usually eat leftovers on Sunday.

I think that for as long as this will be the case, you should reduce your calorie goal by 100/200 calories per week and eat under/at it. Continue to log how you have been. I think that what you've been eating has more calories than your logging, but considering the situation that's not your fault. You will start to lose, eventually.

For the two writers above, think about what you two just said ... A pound of muscle weighs one pound. A pound of fat weighs one pound. Period.

However, a pound of muscle is denser so takes up more space, i.e. smaller in size. A pound of fat is fluffy and well, fat - and takes up more space.

Weight training increases the amount of lean muscle in your body, and thus increases your metabolism over the long term. Weight training also helps counteract the possibility of muscle loss experienced through calorie deficits. Cardio burns calories and uses up the glycogen in your body to help your body move into fat burning mode during your exercise session. Best bet is a combination of both. Find some weight training routines that combine exercises into "super sets" which keep you moving and keep your heart rate up, or routines that use a lot of body weight exercise which also keep your heart pumping. On non-weight lifting days, focus on High Intensity Interval Training followed by 15 minutes or so of steady state cardio.

Just remember that as you are burning fat, but also adding muscle, your body is replacing one for the other so you might not see the results on the scale right away ... Keep up the good work. You are reshaping your body from the inside out and eventually you will start to see the results of your hard work on the outside too!