Terrified to ask, but getting frustrated

I don't have any fabulous advice for you but I did want to say I really admire your courage to put yourself out there like this. Keep up the good work and you will achieve your goals!!

Will you open your food diary?

You're eating more calories than you're burning. It really is that simple.

Open your diary so we can give you more specific feedback.

Make sure you are weighing your food... overestimating exercise is one thing, underestimating your intake is even worse.

You should add sodium to your counts. Alot of your meals are fast food or pre-packaged.. I am willing to bet you are consuming at least 3-4000 of sodium a day which will lead to water retention so make sure you are really pushing that water. Try to be more conscious of your salt intake.

Just remember that its not always automatic about how fast weight comes off. My first two weeks I didn't lose a single pound, and there have been a few times where I didn't lose anything for three weeks in a row. I ate within my caloric range, exercised hard, and drank plenty of water and didn't lose a single pound. That's frustrating but eventually it works itself out. Sometimes you just have to give it the hardest part of this whole thing...patience.

Oh and I want to echo some of the previous posts, the sodium thing is VERY real. One or two days of excessive sodium with screw up a whole weeks loss with water retention. That too works itself out but can be super frustrating.

It's super important that you find a more accurate way to gather data on what you're doing than MFP. Everything here, as helpful as it tries to be is just an estimate. I use a BodyMedia on my arm to find out preceisely what my calorie burn is throughout the day...after a week or so I can look at it and say "okay, so every time I just sit there I burn 2 cals a minute. And that's consistent over days". So i can safely say without guessing that my resting metabolic rate is (2 cals per minute x 60 minutes x 24 hours) 2640 cals per day. Any activity I do will kick my cal burn above that. So in order to fuel my body for those exercises but still have enough to simply function, I have to eat at least 2640 to maintain my RMR but less than what I spend on activity in order to create a deficit.

If I went on MFP's estimate, it'd be about 20-25% lower on the RMR and the activity burn, which would stall my progress. You're doing some good things...just have to find a better way to collect the data that you can use to tweak your results. Good luck!

Asking for help is never wrong!

If you're able, I would buy a Heart Rate Monitor to truly know what calories you're burning during exercise. I love mine (Polar) and it doesn't feel uncomfortable in anyway while I'm exercising.

I would also recommend getting a kitchen scale to weigh your food. I know it might be a pain at first but underestimating can be just as bad as overestimating. On most days I will use my kitchen scale and measuring cups to accurately measure my food since "eyeballing it" doesn't help me.

Make sure you switch up your exercise routines. Zumba is great, but try to incorporate some resistance bands or light weights into your routine. You want to make sure you're not losing muscle while you're trying to burn fat. I love Turbo Fire as has a huge variety of DVD's with different types of exercises.

If you are incorporating strength training into your exercise routine then I would start taking my measurements to see if you are building muscle which will help you burn the fat. It may not reflect on the scale, but it will reflect in your measurements and how your clothes are fitting.

Please don't give up! Think of how hard you worked to get to this point. If it was easy, everyone would be thin. That's what makes this journey so rewarding because no one but you can take credit for the long term positive changes you're making in your life. Becoming healthy is a rollercoster ride with ups and downs, just keep focused at the light at the end of the tunnel and you'll do great!

i'm sorry but even if you overestimated your calories burned, if you are doing zumba at 300 lbs you should be burning more than 100 calories unless you are not moving.