Im not new to this, so where am I going wrong?

Starting out a year ago losing weight was surprisingly easy!
Set sedentary settings to lose 1LB, ate back exercise calories, boom it melted off.

Now, Im about 4 - 8 LBS from goal, and I lowered my settings to lose 0.5LB and kept at sedentary.
Still eating back exercise calories. ( Two days a week, cardio in the gym )

Still measuring foods, still doing everything the same.
Still eating the same foods too ( Not very healthy, but hey -- diaries open )

I havent lost in about 4 months or so.
Other than going back and forth between the same weight.

Is somehow retained water masking my success?
Or am I doing something wrong, or not doing something I should.

5'2", Female, Age 21, 118LBS -- eating around 1320 calories ( more with exercise )

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Id like to get the ball rolling again~

if u have been strict on your diet. then I suggest a few refeed days and then back on your diet

a reset of your leptin

You're eating more than you think. Either by underestimating your food by not weighing it, or buy eating too many calories back.

Starting out a year ago losing weight was surprisingly easy!
Set sedentary settings to lose 1LB, ate back exercise calories, boom it melted off.

Now, Im about 4 - 8 LBS from goal, and I lowered my settings to lose 0.5LB and kept at sedentary.
Still eating back exercise calories. ( Two days a week, cardio in the gym )

Still measuring foods, still doing everything the same.
Still eating the same foods too ( Not very healthy, but hey -- diaries open )

I havent lost in about 4 months or so.
Other than going back and forth between the same weight.

Is somehow retained water masking my success?
Or am I doing something wrong, or not doing something I should.

5'2", Female, Age 21, 118LBS -- eating around 1320 calories ( more with exercise )

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Id like to get the ball rolling again~

I am at the same place you are; with eight pounds left, I have my settings to lose .5 pounds per week, plus I exercise every single day. I eat most all my exercise calories back but not all. Losing this slow is torture, but it's what I need to do to make sure that I am ready when I reach maintenance.

JUst hang in there and accept the these last pounds are much slower, but the end result will be much better.

Cut 100 calories from your daily total. See what happens.

Do you mean cut 100 from my maintenance number?
Cause I cant cut 100 off what Im eating now. I refuse to be under 1200.

How long have you been doing your new regimen?

If after two weeks of reducing your calories, you don't see results, try eating back a smaller percentage of your exercise calories, if any. You could set a limit of 1200 total, and not eat back any exercise calories. When you get close to your goal, the margins of error are razor thin, so you have to fine-tune your calorie total. But "eating at maintenance" for awhile isn't going to do anything except postpone your progress, your body won't be fooled or "jump started" or anything like that. Your body is a pretty durable mechanism.

Also, why is 1200 the line in the sand? You're pretty petite, so your calorie limits are going to be smaller than taller women and men of average height.

^^No.

You seem so frustrated by this process already, so i guess you need to take a break and have a mental re-set. Continue to exercise though(with more food, you will sail through them). Once you feel ready, you can slowly reduce your calories by 100 at a time for few weeks at a time until you see some desired result.

Weight loss closer to goal is really hard! I lost the first 23 pounds very easily, but the last 15 have been going at a snail's pace, but i am not bothered, as long as i do not start gaining. I eat more on days i feel hungry and at deficit when i can manage, slowly but surely the weight is coming off. Do body weight exercises, you can also do some Pilates videos, zumba, yoga right at home.
I have taken several breaks in between my 7-8 months here during vacation, birthday, festivals etc. Just because we are trying to lose weight, does not mean we should stop enjoying our lives

Good luck :flowerforyou:

Im going to try to weigh more things .. but how do you weigh a tablespoon of peanutbutter, or 30 grams of cereal?
Do you weigh the cup first then put it in the cup and weigh that?
Cause last time I put cereal on the scale it wasnt pretty LOOL.

It's actually pretty easy. Buy a digital food scale (they are cheap--you don't need a lot of bells and whistles). Put a container of some sort on the scale (bowl for cereal, spoon for peanut butter, etc.) Let the scale weigh that and then press the "tare" button, which will set the weight to "0". Now you can add whatever to that container (pour some cereal, scoop out the pb) and you will know how much you are taking out. I would recommend grams for most measurements since that seems to be the most common unit in the MFP database. But I use oz for meats, cheeses, and milk.

Also, barring extra heavy liquids or slurries, 1g =1mL.

Good luck!

ETA: If for some reason you cannot find a scale with a "tare" button, simply weigh the container and then weigh the container with the food and subtract the container's weight to find the weight of the food. Simple and easy.

You're eating more than you think. Either by underestimating your food by not weighing it, or buy eating too many calories back.

Bumping my own comment.

It doesn't matter what you eat as much as how much you eat. Measuring food is not enough, when you're only cutting 250 calories a day from your TDEE, it's most important to be as accurate as possible. It's very easy to eat half of that just by measuring your food with cups and spoons, which are not accurate. You got to weigh it.

And you eat back exercise calories, so unless you have a HRM, you're probably eating too many calories back too.

Its been a week since I lowered it to 1240.
So, I should probably wait a little longer then before switching up my body again right?

And the reason its my line is because I was always lead to believe eating under that was unhealthy and bad for your metabolism.
I know Im short, but I wasnt sure if that mattered.
I doubt I could manage to eat lower than that without having a binge attack anyway from such small amount of food! Hahaha!

Eat at maintenance for your goal weight for a couple of weeks at least. The biggest thing right now is to avoid binging and see how the higher calories of maintenance feel. I do believe that it will signal your metabolism that it doesn't need to slow down anymore from dieting, but there are good psychological reasons to do it in any case.

Don't worry about the last few pounds right now. Add in some body-shaping exercise if you still want to see body changes, and let the food part be more normal. You (and your metabolism) might just be burned out from dieting, and cutting calories more will definitely increase the risk of binging, yes!

2 weeks of maintenance isn't going to hurt anything except an arbitrary goal date. It's a lifestyle Go on to maintenance for at least a bit.

Its been a week since I lowered it to 1240.
So, I should probably wait a little longer then before switching up my body again right?

And the reason its my line is because I was always lead to believe eating under that was unhealthy and bad for your metabolism.
I know Im short, but I wasnt sure if that mattered.
I doubt I could manage to eat lower than that without having a binge attack anyway from such small amount of food! Hahaha!

Eat at maintenance for your goal weight for a couple of weeks at least. The biggest thing right now is to avoid binging and see how the higher calories of maintenance feel. I do believe that it will signal your metabolism that it doesn't need to slow down anymore from dieting, but there are good psychological reasons to do it in any case.

Don't worry about the last few pounds right now. Add in some body-shaping exercise if you still want to see body changes, and let the food part be more normal. You (and your metabolism) might just be burned out from dieting, and cutting calories more will definitely increase the risk of binging, yes!

2 weeks of maintenance isn't going to hurt anything except an arbitrary goal date. It's a lifestyle Go on to maintenance for at least a bit.

All this "your metabolism is going to slow down!" fearmongering is baseless. Your body isn't a Swiss watch. 200 calories plus or minus isn't going to magically ruin your metabolism and make you gain weight from particles in the air. I cannot believe the amount of panic people feel about "ruining your metabolism". That's actually really hard to do.

Its been a week since I lowered it to 1240.
So, I should probably wait a little longer then before switching up my body again right?

And the reason its my line is because I was always lead to believe eating under that was unhealthy and bad for your metabolism.
I know Im short, but I wasnt sure if that mattered.
I doubt I could manage to eat lower than that without having a binge attack anyway from such small amount of food! Hahaha!

Eat at maintenance for your goal weight for a couple of weeks at least. The biggest thing right now is to avoid binging and see how the higher calories of maintenance feel. I do believe that it will signal your metabolism that it doesn't need to slow down anymore from dieting, but there are good psychological reasons to do it in any case.

Don't worry about the last few pounds right now. Add in some body-shaping exercise if you still want to see body changes, and let the food part be more normal. You (and your metabolism) might just be burned out from dieting, and cutting calories more will definitely increase the risk of binging, yes!

2 weeks of maintenance isn't going to hurt anything except an arbitrary goal date. It's a lifestyle Go on to maintenance for at least a bit.

All this "your metabolism is going to slow down!" fearmongering is baseless. Your body isn't a Swiss watch. 200 calories plus or minus isn't going to magically ruin your metabolism and make you gain weight from particles in the air. I cannot believe the amount of panic people feel about "ruining your metabolism". That's actually really hard to do.

I didn't say 'ruin', and there are no magical air particles, no. However, study after study confirm that metabolism adapts to low-calorie diets. We're lucky it does, or we probably would have died out by now.

If you understood where metabolism fit into the energy equation, you would see that nothing is pulled from the air.

You sound like your metabolism has not had this effect, and that's great. There are individual differences, and time on a diet is definitely a factor. But if you are trying to assert as fact that there is never a metabolism change after a change of caloric intake, you need to explain the studies, then, imho.

Its been a week since I lowered it to 1240.
So, I should probably wait a little longer then before switching up my body again right?

And the reason its my line is because I was always lead to believe eating under that was unhealthy and bad for your metabolism.
I know Im short, but I wasnt sure if that mattered.
I doubt I could manage to eat lower than that without having a binge attack anyway from such small amount of food! Hahaha!

Eat at maintenance for your goal weight for a couple of weeks at least. The biggest thing right now is to avoid binging and see how the higher calories of maintenance feel. I do believe that it will signal your metabolism that it doesn't need to slow down anymore from dieting, but there are good psychological reasons to do it in any case.

Don't worry about the last few pounds right now. Add in some body-shaping exercise if you still want to see body changes, and let the food part be more normal. You (and your metabolism) might just be burned out from dieting, and cutting calories more will definitely increase the risk of binging, yes!

2 weeks of maintenance isn't going to hurt anything except an arbitrary goal date. It's a lifestyle Go on to maintenance for at least a bit.

All this "your metabolism is going to slow down!" fearmongering is baseless. Your body isn't a Swiss watch. 200 calories plus or minus isn't going to magically ruin your metabolism and make you gain weight from particles in the air. I cannot believe the amount of panic people feel about "ruining your metabolism". That's actually really hard to do.

I didn't say 'ruin', and there are no magical air particles, no. However, study after study confirm that metabolism adapts to low-calorie diets. We're lucky it does, or we probably would have died out by now.

If you understood where metabolism fit into the energy equation, you would see that nothing is pulled from the air.

You sound like your metabolism has not had this effect, and that's great. There are individual differences, and time on a diet is definitely a factor. But if you are trying to assert as fact that there is never a metabolism change after a change of caloric intake, you need to explain the studies, then, imho.

If the metabolism "adjusts", that effect isn't extremely dramatic. And do please cite these studies you speak of, for those of us who wish to read more about this. The bottom line is, you're not going to fine-tune your metabolism by eating 100 more or fewer calories on a day-to-day basis. What you WILL do is increase of decrease your calorie deficit, which depending on your goals, is what you want to do. The "eat more to lose weight" mantra people like to champion around here sounds more like active sabotage to me than anything else.

OP, try eating at 1300-1350 calories TOTAL (not eating back exercise) for a couple of weeks, and see if that gets you back on track. And maybe go easy on the exercise too, if you want. Exercise isn't really for weight loss so much as it it's for fitness/health. Since you want to lose weight, try focusing on that for a couple of weeks and go back to the exercise once you're losing steadily again. Whatever you do, don't let anyone talk you into eating 2000 calories a day or try to make you worry about your metabolism. Your metabolism is going to be just fine, unless you do really drastic and clearly ill-advised things (like taking drugs, not eating for weeks on end, etc.)

OP, you might want to upping your protein macro. MFP notoriously sets those low. I am better able to resist binges when my body is getting all the protein it needs. (Lots here recommend 1 g/lb lean body mass). I go a little over even that. I have dialed down my carbs and increased my fats as well.

It's mostly in response to my sudden binging that is anywhere from 200-900 calories over a night.
It makes me really discouraged and realize I may not be able to do this for the rest of my life. ( maintaining that is )
I've come so far yes. But the feeling is so bittersweet.

I dont have much exp. or success but maybe you should calculate your TDEE -20% and go off that. It would allow you more calories because you don't eat them back. Maybe your binge eating is a result of feeling like your restricting your calories and feeling like your depriving your self.. (that's how I feel all the time)

In agreement with previous posters try strength training you dont need a gym or a lot of weights, you can do it with your body weight..

By my calculations, she should be eating in the 1350-1450 range, based on TDEE calculations. I think "eating back exercise calories" is a recipe for really fouled-up math. And it's such a "micromanaging" approach. TDEE is SO much simpler and more consistent.

Personally, I don't find TDEE - whatever to be all that easy, because my exercise is not at all consistent and I do lots of different things depending on the weather and how well I am feeling. One day I might run/walk 8 miles, the next do a Gin Miller kettlebell routine. As long as I am careful not to over estimate my exercise calories, I like being able to walk a couple extra miles at the end of the day if I need to, to meet my calorie goals. I guess it really is a personal choice and whatever works best for the individual.