Cannot lose weight

I don't think doing mostly cardio is going to be making your muscles bigger, even if you're doing lots of strength training they're not going to get all that much bigger if you're in a deficit.

How long have you been dieting for? Do you eat back your exercise calories? If so, how do you calculate your exercise calories and how much do you think you're burning off? Can you open your diary so we can see what you're eating?

Wait. Burn 1400 calories? 1400 calories alone, without exercise should be a deficit. You net 1400, if that's the case. Also, I'm 5'3.5 " and lose weight eating a net of 1700. If you've recently started a new activity, or bumped up intensity, you could be getting water retention for muscle repair (hence why you feel your muscles are inflated). That will go away in time. I do not think you should cut calories further. You only have 6 lbs to lose. Slow down, it isn't a race. Make sure you're logging everything, feeding your body properly, and have patience.

Wait. Burn 1400 calories? 1400 calories alone, without exercise should be a deficit. You net 1400, if that's the case. Also, I'm 5'3.5 " and lose weight eating a net of 1700. If you've recently started a new activity, or bumped up intensity, you could be getting water retention for muscle repair (hence why you feel your muscles are inflated). That will go away in time. I do not think you should cut calories further. You only have 6 lbs to lose. Slow down, it isn't a race. Make sure you're logging everything, feeding your body properly, and have patience.

^^^^^^ this

Hi- I am the same, am now sitting in massive grump as despite all that ive been doing weight just sticking- not if I break diet though, then it piles on!! Had some wine and pizza last night and I seem to have popped on 3lbs over night! !

So you ate 11,500 calories over maintenace? Ya right, also stop hi jacking threads.

Dude, it's really easy to gain 3 pounds from a night of drinking and pizza. I'm living proof.

I don't think doing mostly cardio is going to be making your muscles bigger, even if you're doing lots of strength training they're not going to get all that much bigger if you're in a deficit.

How long have you been dieting for? Do you eat back your exercise calories? If so, how do you calculate your exercise calories and how much do you think you're burning off? Can you open your diary so we can see what you're eating?

I'm just quoting you so I can say I LOVE your profile pic. Jinx.

You need to get in the right frame of mind and let it happen. You are taking in the right amount of calories and are exercising. Even without exercise, you are going to lose. My only way to success is not to obsess about my weight. I pick the right amount of calories and journal my food and exercise daily and let it take care of itself. I try to not worry about it and just let it happen.

There are several common reasons for not losing weight on MFP.

1) You naturally have a low BMR. Despite the silly rumor that floats around here that everyone has the same basal metabolic rate and people are only fat because of poor eating and exercise habits, the reality from actual scientific study is that we actually do differ considerably in BMR even for the same lean mass. One study even identified an extreme case where two people with the same lean mass differed as much in BMR as having the person with the slower BMR run a 5K every day. Obviously, in most cases the difference is less but even a modest difference can make the difference between weight loss or maintenance over the course of weeks. The funny thing is that the same people who argue that such differences among individuals do not exist are often the first to jump on people eating 1200 calls per day to say they are killing their metabolism. Metabolisms can indeed slow with too low of a calorie intake, but that effect is pretty subtle when compared to among person variation. This is all a long way of saying that it is ok for you to try reducing your calorie goal a bit to see if that makes the difference for your metabolism. Just don't reduce too extreme.

2) You eat back too many exercise calories. Most estimates of exercise calories are hugely over-estimates and if your BMR is already a bit below the average, eating back that overestimate can erase much of your actual deficit. Try eating back only 50% of your exercise calories if you are in the range of say 500 estimated exercise calories in a given day.

3) You are not eating the calories you think you are eating. This is a big one. Buy a quality food scale and measuring cups and measure everything that does not come in a pre-determined single serving size. Also, fight the urge when looking up foods in the MFP database to pick the tantalizing low calorie entries. Always try to pick the most accurate option. A real common 'cheat' that people do is they use an existing entry for recipe food. Two recipes for the same food can differ by a 100% in calories. Use the MFP recipe and 'my foods' option to mor accurately construct nutritional info for foods you commonly prepare.

4) Don't freak out or fear experimentation. You have given your current approach a few weeks and haven't obtained the results you wanted. So go ahead and change things up a bit for the next few weeks and see if you get a better result, Almost everyone who is successful at this has tweaked things from the baselines or changed things up when they stopped getting the results they were after. It's part of the process. Just don't change things up too quickly or extreme. Weight loss is a slow process that often hinges on modest changes in calories in versus out, so you need at least a couple weeks to evaluate any change you make to your diet/exercise plan.