What's going wrong

It's most probably water weight.

1) use a calculator to figure out how many calories you actually need to eat. http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator/

2) weigh and log all your food and try to eat within 100 calories of your calorie goal

3) go to the gym consistently

4) weigh yourself in a month.

eat at least what mfp the amount of calories they say

I do weigh food so it's definitely not miscalculating. Maybe ill have a good loss eventually. I do usually eat far to much crap , takeaways,crisps,chocolate etc. maybe my body is in shock and thinks I'm starving it ATM?!

... I doubt it.

Please unlock your diary.

Muscle is *denser* than fat, but a pound of each weighs the same. It takes a caloric surplus and lifting to build muscle. You say you eat take-out a lot? It could be the higher sodium content causing your body to retain water. When I eat out, I tend to gain a few "pounds," then I'm back to my normal weight in a day or two. Also, keep accurate track of your food.

What worked really well for me was taking a 15% - 20% cut from TDEE (Total Daily Engery Expenditure, or, what you burn in a day based on activity level). Eating at TDEE maintains weight. Eating above TDEE makes you gain weight. Here's my example, using the Scooby calculator:

I am 165 pounds, 5'3", age 20, female. My activity level is "3 -5 hours/week of moderate exercise."
The goal I selected was "lose fat - 15% calorie reduction." At this current activity level, I should eat 1,962 calories to lose weight. I would be maintaining my weight if I ate 2,309 calories (which is my TDEE).

Generally, it's not recommended to go above a 20% cut in calories from your TDEE. Make sure you are not going below your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), which is what your body needs to do its daily functions (not counting activity).

Good luck! Also, if you lift heavy, it can help preserve your lean body mass!

It sounds to me like you are not eating enough!

Personally for me I like to split my calories up into many small meals so I may eat 200-300 calories 5-7 different times a day instead of eating 3 larger meals. I have much better results when I do that. You didn't say what you were eating for that 1200 calories or when you were eating it. Those things do matter as well.

Good luck to you!

Well, here are a couple of thoughts.

First of all, 10 days is not enough time to judge progress by, especially if you started going to the gym around the same time as you changed your eating patterns. You do retain water after beginning exercise, because your muscles hold on to glycogen, which is hydrophilic. So give it at least a month before you decide it's not working.

About your diet: in general, in order to lose weight, you need to eat less than you expend; there are no magical foods that make you fat or make you thin. But looking through your diary, I can see how eating less might eventually get pretty unsatisfying, as the foods are calorie-dense but not filling. So here is a suggestion. First of all, increase your protein intake goal to about 0.7 g times your total weight in pounds. So if you weighed, say, 160, you would be aiming to hit 112 grams a day. Second, try to get about 25-30 grams of fiber a day. You do not need to track sugar, that's pretty much a useless metric on MFP and it's set too low by default anyway. But if you get plenty of fiber-rich foods, coupled with proteins, you will feel much more full and satisfied. The carb/fat ratio is not as important for most people, but you do need to get a minimum amount of fat just to be able to absorb certain vitamins and so your hair doesn't fall out and your skin doesn't peel off. I like to keep fat high because it's tasty.