Have you figured out your TDEE? Let us know your stats and we will be able to help you a bit more...

Without having those stats, my gut feeling is that you are probably still way under eating. You are working out 5 times a week and just based on your weight (since we have no other info), my guess it that your TDEE is significantly higher that 1,500.

Were you at that low 1,200 calorie level for a long time? Coming from that history, it sounds like you might want to try a re-set and get your metabolism all revved up prior to cutting. Doing a re-set will allow your metabolism to acclimate to the new increased level of eating, and eating consistently at this level will sort of "re-train" your metabolism that the intake will be consistent (and not those restrict/binge cycles you were on in the past). Once your metabolism has adapted and stabilized at that higher level, then you will be ready to do that cut.

One other thing, be prepared for this process to take a lot longer than 4 weeks for results. It is a slow process, but one that is worth it in the long run. Have you ready the threads tacked to the top of the EM2WL group forum? There is tons of great info there about what to expect as you go through this process.

Feel free to add me as a friend if you would like a shoulder to lean on...

Absolutely! Okay, you have figured out your TDEE - that is also known as "Maintenance". This figure is the total number of calories you burn throughout the day. It includes your BMR, regular daily activities (shopping, school, walking the dog...etc) as well as your formal exercise. In theory, if you eat at Maintenance (TDEE), you will maintain. Occasionally, this is not true, like if you have suppressed your metabolism through years of low calorie dieting. Eventually, after years of under eating, the body adapts and just slows down the metabolism to meet your intake. This is often what seems to be happening when people say "I am eating 1,000 calories a day, doing an hour of cardio a day an can't lose anything - in fact I am gaining!" What may be happening is that their metabolism has finally slowed down to meet their low intake and high calorie burns.

A Metabolic Reset attempts to heal the metabolism after this low calorie "abuse". EM2WL recommends that you increase your calories to TDEE and stay there for approximately 8 weeks allowing the metabolism to get revved back up and used to the constant intake again. After this period of time, when you take a slight (i.e 15%) deficit, the body will usually respond favorable and drop some fat in response to that new deficit.

Since it sounds like you have been a low cal "binger" (eating low calories for an extended period of time, then having a "binge" every so often, or in your case every weekend), then you can expect your body to possibly react negatively at first. It might assume that this is just another one of your "binges" and that "starvation" is just around the corner, resulting in it holding on to everything that comes through in the beginning. Once it senses that it will receive regular intake (and not the restrict/binge cycles), it will react accordingly by actually letting go..

If you decide to do the reset, I would suggest that you increase very slowly to TDEE. This should help to minimize some of the fluctuations you will see on the scale. You can try adding 100 calories a day onto your daily intake, and monitor your weight. It may initially bounce a round, but then should acclimate and stabilize again. Once it does this, you can bump it up another 100 or so. Just keep repeating this process until you get up to TDEE. It can be a fairly long process, but think of it as healing your metabolism. Take it nice and slow and just monitor your weight along the way -- rushing the reset process is often the cause of unnecessarily high weight gain, causing one to quit early.

Hope that helps a bit :-)