I need advice as to why calorie deficit doesn't work for me

Have you tried sticking to 1200-1500 (or whatever mfp gives you as your net) for a while rather than just a couple of days? it might be the case that you put on a couple of pounds to begin but then with persistence would lose them again and more, also are you being strict about your calorie count by weighing food etc as it's easy to eat more than you realize if you're not strict

I'm the same way. Your metabolism is in the toilet, basically. Because you've been eating at such a low caloric state (I'm assuming you're not under 5 feet tall), your body is hanging on to everything it has because you've consistently been telling it that there is nothing to eat. I ate at 1200 (which is lower than minimum for my body) and after 4 months I stalled out completely. I'm having to up my metabolism again. Eat 6-7 small meals a day and try to stick with healthy foods (some might argue that), and drink plenty of water (I try to drink a gallon a day). You might also look into exercising. Try eating around your TDEE for a month. You won't lose any weight eating at 1000 if your metabolism is in the trash, so go ahead and enjoy some healthy food and get the metabolism going again.

Can we start simple with your stats and exercise routine as well as opening up your diary? Also, do you weigh and measure your foods?

To point out, increasing the number of meals does NOT increase your metabolism nor will it improve weight loss by any means. More meals is a satiety thing, not a weight loss thing.

meal timings/frequencys have no effect on weight loss.. they will simply dictate how much you weigh at certain points of the day.

there are so many factors effecting what the scales actually say, but as far as loosing actual fat there is only one thing that will effect that.. a calorie deficit.

The only way to achieve a healthy calorie deficit is accuaracy in what your eating.

I'm the same way. Your metabolism is in the toilet, basically. Because you've been eating at such a low caloric state (I'm assuming you're not under 5 feet tall), your body is hanging on to everything it has because you've consistently been telling it that there is nothing to eat. I ate at 1200 (which is lower than minimum for my body) and after 4 months I stalled out completely. I'm having to up my metabolism again. Eat 6-7 small meals a day and try to stick with healthy foods (some might argue that), and drink plenty of water (I try to drink a gallon a day). You might also look into exercising. Try eating around your TDEE for a month. You won't lose any weight eating at 1000 if your metabolism is in the trash, so go ahead and enjoy some healthy food and get the metabolism going again.

Eating 6-7 meals a day has no influence on how much BF a person has.

To point out, increasing the number of meals does NOT increase your metabolism nor will it improve weight loss by any means. More meals is a satiety thing, not a weight loss thing.

Every thing I have read about increasing the number of meals to increase the frequency at which you feed your body, while decreasing the amount of calories in those meals, leads to a higher metabolism. I guess it depends on which source you go to, because a quick search on .edu sites told me it was both true and not true. But eating more meals may be a mind-over-matter thing. If you eat more frequently on healthy foods, you won't be as hungry later.

I would suggest you pick new resources.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9155494
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html

(Edit: Not meant as a personal attack on you. )

I'm sorry you are having such a hard time, I completely understand where you are coming from. I just came back from a month of the "I don't give a ****" attitude, and am going to get back on track....I'm not sure why except to be healthy even if I am fat. I laugh and shake my head at all these "you're in a calorie deficit you'll lose weight"....YES, that's the way it's supposed to work, but I've been at a deficit for more years than I can remember. I got tired after a couple of years of weighing and tracking everything without dropping a single pound. I went to whole wheat everything, whole grains, fresh fruit (minimal), brown rice, fresh veggies, moved away (not completely) from red meat, eat lots of chicken and fish..........did lots of walking @ 3 miles per hour...sorry can't walk faster than that, started jogging in spurts while walking, NOTHING! I've done the 1200 calorie thing for about a year, moved to the 1500 calorie thing, I even did my TDEE and went 500 under for almost a year. According to everything I've read and my little tracker I am supposed to be burning between 2000 and 3000 per day, I should weigh 120 by now.

So, I joined a gym with personal trainers, got a tracker to track how many calories I should be burning....I got fitter, but not trimmer.....from October til June I GAINED 20 lbs, was it muscle?, some of it was most certainly, but I also had to buy a bigger pair of paints because they got too tight around my waist., my measurements were changing, but not in a good way. Even the personal trainer couldn't figure out what was going on.

Cheat you say.....no, I was not sneaking food or not counting my calories properly, (after 20 years of this I know how it's done) and I have a witness, my husband.

The only thing left for me to do is to see a doctor, but that will have to wait as I have no insurance and very little money....

The moral of this little rant....write down everything for a month...everything you eat, everything you drink, every exercise, and how much of each, write down how much you weigh every Monday morning and then if you see no change it's time to see your Doctor to find out what the problem is and good luck cause I feel your pain.

I had the same exact problem for quite some time.... What I found was that I had completely trashed my metabolism to the point where it has taken over 2 months to get it back on track.

Use the TDEE-20%, measure all of your food, avoid fast foods & processed foods (very high in sodium). Make sure you eat good solid calories, don't think just because you get more calories then you are used to you can eat anything, and drink plenty of water. Start walking as much as you can stand... get yourself motivated. You will see a gain at first, but that is your metabolism repairing itself. Be patient, and rant away all you need here, that is what the forum is for!

Best of luck!

First thing.. a calorie deficit works for everyone, if you are not loosing weight you are NOT in a calorie deficit.. no two ways about it.

Now here are the things you could be doing wrong:

Monitoring daily or weekly fluctuations and taking them to heart rather than following the longer term trend.

Not weighting all of your food.

Not accurately calculating calories

Not accurately weighting yourself

Fluctuating your glycogen and/or your water weight levels with an inconsistant eating pattern.

Your eating too few calories and your are not going to loose any more fat doing so, you will simply sacrifice more lean muscle mass and utterly screw your body composition up.

In short.. you are being a typical yo-yo dieter, get the calories up, get lifting for that LMM, track EVERYTHING

Not strictly true...

What is true in a calorie deficit you will start to lose something, whether it be fat (likely) or muscle.

However, you are looking at scales and not body composition. You could be retaining water, especially if you are not staying hydrated enough (so all the electrolytes in your body are out of balance and your body is clinging on to water due to osmosis trying to balance higher concentrations of electrolytes such as sodium out)

A 5lb fluctuation in a day for me is normal. Even more so when I'm eating loads of veg. It also bloats me but when I weigh myself next day and *TMI alert* in the morning after a good poo, i can be 5lbs lighter than say the night before...

Do not obsess over the scales. Look at other benefits such as an improvement in fitness, improvement in skin quality / cellulite, improvement in dress size/clothes fitting.

You need to understand that its easier to put on a pound of fat than it is to lose it. You only need to eat an extra 500 calories a day for a week.

Also, you may not genuinely be in a deficit... you must be accurate with working out calorie content if you're operating to the threshold and also, you need to be sure of your calorie burn/expenditure... because if you're eating for a number that isout... you could be in a calorie surplus very easily...