i want to quit!!!

First off, you ARE seeing progress if you lost inches somewhere but the scale didn't move. You can be losing fat, and gaining equal weight in muscle, causing no scale movement, but your health is being improved. Later you will see progress once your body has built up the muscle it will. Also, being through this type of thing many times with myself and with others, I've found that despite math and what science and people say "should" happen, the body doesn't necessarily comply with your expectations or numbers: you will have sudden increases and decreases for no apparent reason. Sometimes you will have no change and then suddenly drop pounds like crazy. Other times it seems you will be stuck doing the exact same thing you previously lost weight doing and not be losing any weight for a while. The way to combat this is to observe what you are doing more closely, weigh food accurately, weigh yourself at the same time after doing the same things every time, exercise log truthfully and accurately, don't starve yourself, log EVERYTHING and be honest with your activity level. It will help a lot, but you will still have "those weeks" you don't know why what happened happened with your weight.

From your replies you also seem to be missing a concept about weighing food. Yes you should be able to convert a serving between grams and teaspoons. Unfortunately, sometimes the actual physical spoon holds more than the amount of grams its supposed to. Especially if you overfill it or in other words use it not as a measuring device (how many times do you actually level off your tablespoon before using the ingredient? many dont ever...) I can easily take "a tablespoon" of something and eyeball it, think its fine, but if I weigh it out in grams it may not be anywhere near what I thought, it can be almost half of what I thought was a "serving"...and if its something like oil or peanut butter or mayo, that's a lot of calories.

Personally, I've been losing regularly for quite a few months, but the past month I've had NO change. Up and down and up and down and up and down...but I've watched myself and I know why, and I expect it to continue this trend until the new year. This is happening even though some days I burn as much as 3,200 calories in a day due to exercise: because I then eat like a pig during the holidays and it balances!

Anyways, you don't have to eat as much as me and therefore you don't have to be as extreme as I am in some of my calorie burns, I'm just saying I know how it can be frustrating, but if you take the long view and figure out how accurate your calorie burns and calorie consumptions are, you will understand why it's happening, and realize its not a short term thing at all, even if you lose 1lb/wk average, its unreasonable to expect some weeks with little to no progress, so that's probably at least 8 months...so a first month of losing inches and gaining muscle means you are actually on track! Just tighten up getting a fix on those calorie and exercise measurements.

Yay! Congrats on getting motivated and just doing it! Woop!

Digital food scales at Walmart are about $14.00. If money is a problem, think of the money (and weight) you will save with smaller portions. There may even be used ones at a thrift store or on-line. They are not expensive at all.