what am I doing wrong

HI Freda,

Your diary is not open, which would make it easier for people to provide feedback. That said--

Do you weigh all your food and measure/weight liquids?

Do you log everything you eat?

Keeping accurate track of all the food you eat and exercise and eat within your calorie goals. If you use the MFP method to calculate calories, it does not account for exercise calories therefore you need to eat them back to properly fuel your body.If you use MFP calorie estimations, only eat about half back because they are way overestimated.

I think you are on the right track by not cutting out any foods you love. Losing weight is not about the type of food you eat but how much. Moderation is the key.

The exercise will make you fitter and help you get in shape, but unless you eat less than you burn, it is not going to help lose weight. Set a weight loss goal of half to one lb per week, calculate how much you should be eating, and start logging your calories. Use a scale to weigh everything you eat, at least the first weeks until you can get better at estimates.

You're underestimating your food & overestimating your burns. Log everything you eat & drink accurately & honestly. Weigh all your food.

Read this: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

Be careful that you don't cut too many calories as your body will slow down on weight loss. Your body will use your muscle as fuel - defeating the purpose of loosing fat/gaining muscle. I'm 5'6 and 139 pounds. I eat anywhere between 1700-2200 calories a day and still loose weight (I burn 300-800 calories during my workouts). It's important to fuel your body for those workouts so that you are burning fat and not muscle. If you want to add me as a friend, you can see my daily food log.

Thanks for the advice considering how little I eat I assumed I had to be burning more calories than I was taking in between cardio, and dancing, and walking I'm not a big eater I cut my calories alot I guess not enough strangly I weighed less when I wasn't working out at all seems since I started gym I've put on more weight even though I eat less than before. I'm just going to limit myself to 800 calories a day and I'm starting a cleanser tonite. I did my cardio and burned over 700 calories today plus I will be doing an aerobic tape later going to burn another hundred or two. I'll log if I have lost any weight at end of week

OMG, no! Eat whatever MFP sets for your daily goal based on what you entered in for your stats or go to that thread that editorgrrl linked and follow along to custom set goals. You realize that if you only eat 800 calories and burn off 700 that means you've only consumed 100 NET calories, right? That is pretty much the definition of starvation! Hell, people in the Nazi concentration camps ate more than that! A newborn baby eats more than that. You are setting yourself up for some major health issues if you try to handle weight loss that way!

There. Is. No. Need. To Starve. Yourself. To. Lose Weight.

Also, forget the cleanses - complete waste of money. Just give the food tracking a chance for a few months and see how you do. No need for extremes!

It is a little confusing, but at the end of the day our bodies work best when they are within a range of calories. If you go too low, your body will think it is starving and begin to burn muscle mass which is really really bad. If you go too high, you gain weight. So you need to figure out what that range is for you. Myfitnesspal arbitrarily sets the lowest calorie count at 1200 per day, although there is lots of debate on if that is the right number or not. Regardless, I would avoid going beneath that.

Myfitnesspal will give you a recommended number of calories to eat each day. You can figure this out by going to the home page, clicking on goals and click change goals. Follow the prompts and it will give you an idea of what you need to eat in order to lose weight. Do not select to lose more than 1 lbs a week, as that will likely not give you enough calories.

Once you figure out how many calories to eat, you need to start journaling. If you can afford it, buy a food scale. Weigh or measure everything that goes into your mouth and record it under the diary on MyFitnessPal. When you exercise, enter that as well. The number of calories you will be able to eat will vary depending on how active you are on a given day. Try to stick as close as you can to the recommended number of calories that MyFitnessPal tells you to.

Give this a few weeks, you might not see a change right away but over time you will. Good luck! It is a journey, but it is lots of fun to experiment with new foods and new workouts.

I've been struggling with this very thing since i started on MFP! i have actually gained 2-3lbs since my starting weight. I just can't seem to find that magic number i need to lose weight. I find that I get hungry too, but then you get told to "just drink some water". Well, I do that, and i'm still hungry. I started this journey at 168lbs, and wanted to lose 10lbs, but I now weigh 171 on a good day.(I'm 5'11) I run 3-4 days a week, 3-4 miles, and then I do some weights, lunges, squast, that kind of thing. Other days, I do a Jillian Michael's DVD. I don't work out EVERY day, but aim for 4 days a week. My legs feel tighter, and my butt, and I have lose a couple inches, which i'm proud of, but.....I've went back up a size! I have a desk job also.
I eat lots of raw fruit and veggies, so I do try to eat healthy. Today is my first day back logging my calorie intake in a while. I got to be pretty inconsistent at logging, but still tried to eat healthy.
So, i'm just as frustrated as you are! I drink my water all day, and even some green tea. I just turned 40 and I know that metabolism tends to slow, but yet I'm hungry! I'm hungry right now, as I type this. I had a fat free light greek yogurt with some fresh frozen mango chunks mixed into it at about 2:15, and I'm starting to feel hungry again already. By the time i get home, my stomach will be hurting.

mfp has given me a calorie goal which I think is too high for me so I will diviate slightly. I've started tracking my food and exercise. I've worked hard weight training keeping my arms, legs, butt etc firm so I don't want to lose my muscles. I've just grown sad and weary watching the scale go in the opposite direction and not understanding why, when I work so hard to stay active and eat better considering m months ago I did no cardio and ate what I wanted. Now I eat better and exercise and am gaining. I've never had to use any kind of aid to help when I've wanted to lose I've always been able to so guess I gotta learn some new ways. I don't desire to be skinny I'd rather weigh around 165-170 as I like curves definitely prefer to be muscular.

The less you have to lose, the more slowly it comes off. With only 25 lb. to go, set your goal to .5 lb. per week, and be patient.

Trust the system. Follow your MFP goal for a few weeks, then reevaluate. Work on your logging. Log everything you eat & drink accurately & honestly. Get a food scale. Weigh all your food. Measure your liquids. Learn to use the recipe builder: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/box

Muscle does not weigh more than fat. 1 pound of muscle weighs the same as one pound of feathers, or one pound of anything. It just looks different.

Track your measurements along with your weight. Sometimes the scale won't budge much, but you will be losing inches and look slimmer.

Weigh all of your food and log it accurately. Yes, all of it.

If you want a more accurate estimate of your calories burned during steady state exercise, invest in a heart rate monitor. A lot of members here recommend the FT4 or FT7 by Polar, but you can shop around.

Figuring out how many of your exercise calories you should be eating back will be a bit of an experiment. Some people eat all of them back, some only a portion, and some none of them. Over time, you'll get more in tune with your body and figure it out. I'd say start by eating half of the back for a few weeks and adjust from there.

.... Definitely work off more than you eat & DON'T EAT your exercise calories & you should lose weight.

For the love of God, please do not follow this particular advice. The other posters have given you some very solid info. Best of luck to you.