Is this just normal for colder weather?

I swear this happens every year. I am up about 4 lbs. I've been working out just as hard as ever (6 days a week), making sure I'm eating (mostly) right, and drinking all my water. Yet my scale says I'm up about 4 lbs. I swear this happened last year too. I do weigh myself every morning, after I've peed, and before I have had any food or drink, so I think it's an accurate measure. It's so frustrating! I re-did my calories on the Scooby TDEE calculator, and gave it a new goal of a 5% loss (was maintaining before), so that should help. Just wondering if I'm alone with this or not!!

ETA: I mentioned the cooler weather since I thought maybe it was in our biology to "warm up" for the winter by adding body fat or something! LOL

It would surprise me if cold weather made a person gain weight. The culprit is usually that more food is going into our mouth than we realize. :bigsmile:

You said you are "eating (mostly)" right. I'm not sure what that means. There is no eating right or wrong, there is only eating and within a calorie deficit if you want to lose weight.

Do you measure your liquid foods and wight your solid foods? Do you log in everything thing you eat every day with accuracy? Are you accurately logging in your exercise calories?

My weight can fluctuate daily MORE then 4lbs. Which is why I don't weight myself daily. It's not giving me an accurate read about how I am doing in the long run. I just causes me to freak out about NORMAL weight fluctuations that happen to everyone.

I know that MFP allows for daily activity to increase your consumed calories, but this is really supposed to be daily activity above and beyond the normal moving around stuff. There are a couple of numbers to be aware of.
First, your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the approximate number of calories you would burn each day if you were in a coma and completely inert.
Second, TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) this is the number that MFP calculates for your daily calorie target. (slightly under if you are trying to lose, slightly over if you are trying to gain) This number includes things like walking around and working, but not concentrated exercise.
My point being that you should probably not be including the daily results of the heart rate monitor to your calorie limit, as your TDEE already includes a factor for daily activity. Just include calories from dedicated workouts and otherwise try to eat under your TDEE.
Here is the calculator that I use:
http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/
Most people qualify as sedentary unless you work construction or something.

Sure thing! If you want to do it the way you have been then you really should be starting with the BMR number and adding all of your daily calories to that, but then you have to be sure to log every calorie both in and out. I tend to just log my workouts and ignore the extra calories that they give me unless I do something foolish like run a tough mudder (about 2400 calories), in which case I will eat whatever the heck I feel like that day.

On the 3rd tab, under presets, did you select weight loss or faster weight loss as your goal? Those sound like Recomp numbers to me, which is fine if you are happy with your weight and just want to turn it all to muscle.
This article would help with that: http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/07/21/meet-staci-your-new-powerlifting-super-hero/

My point being that you should probably not be including the daily results of the heart rate monitor to your calorie limit, as your TDEE already includes a factor for daily activity. Just include calories from dedicated workouts and otherwise try to eat under your TDEE.
Here is the calculator that I use:
http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/
Most people qualify as sedentary unless you work construction or something.

This is incredibly helpful, and thank you. I had been eating back my exercise calories so that's probably part of the problem! I will check that calculator out... thank you!

Actually, don't do that, you'll be creating bigger than 500 calorie deficit while nursing. Bad idea.

He was not speaking correctly at all. Perhaps he doesn't know or remember how MFP works, perhaps he came from another site where the majority do use a TDEE deficit method, perhaps he does himself. But MFP does NOT.

He thinks you said you wear your HRM all day and eat that back it sounds like - not sure where he got that from.

In addition, MFP does NOT estimate your TDEE at all. TDEE of course by definition including exercise - Total Daily Energy Expenditure.
MFP estimates daily maintenance they call it, non-exercise TDEE in other words.

With the understanding you will log exercise and their figure will now go up, and indeed include exercise now.

Now it's TDEE, now you take off the 500 calories, now you have a deficit the same daily.

No, logging exercise calories you have a good estimate of is correct.

And don't do that intermittent fasting calculator, usually very confusing, though they have improved it lately.

Make small changes.
If your weight was creeping up, knock off those 200 calories only.
Don't do that AND nursing calories.

If you really want to try a totally different method, the TDEE deficit can work with a steady routine, use the spreadsheet on my profile page. Hundreds finding it successful.

That's why some many have a hard time with MFP, they don't follow the program, and the always estimate on what they think is the safe side (underestimated), and they have no idea how much they used to eat, when not exercising.

So they change everything at once, totally different eating when they don't binge, gung-ho on exercise, and so eating tons less and exercising tons more. No reason the body is in shock and stops responding positively after a while.

Anyway. Just cut the 200 cal daily for a month. Your BMR literally does change through the month, your base metabolism. So it'll take a month to see if you got the number right.

I have a tendency to eat more as the weather gets colder. No idea if biology, habit, or just an excuse for soul-filling delicious foods.

@heybales: I was momentarily terrified that you might be correct and that I had been giving out bad information, or information based on a poor understanding, but I just used MFP to recalculate my calorie goal (instead of using the calculator I linked above) and it gave me very nearly the same number, which is my TDEE, NOT my BMR. If MFP is calculating BMR, then they don't need to ask the question about activity level at all. I believe you are incorrect about that part, but you are completely correct that making such a large change when nursing would not be a great plan.