Eat, walk, hike, lose zero???

First thing, open your diary

First thing, open your diary

This. Or what's the point?

Also, just because you expend a lot of energy one day doesn't mean you'll magically lose x amount of pounds. The body is a complex system, it could be that you ate more calories than you thought you did, or your calories burned was off. Maybe you've been holding water to repair your muscles.

Either way. The trick to weightloss is consistency. Eventually, moving more and eating less is going to work.

Your diary is not public.

If you're gaining weight, then you're eating more than you burn. You're underestimating your food &/or overestimating your burns. Get a digital scale, and weigh everything you eat—even packaged foods. Learn to find accurate database entries. (There's a lot of junk data in there.) Log everything you eat & drink accurately & honestly.

The Sexypants post should be required reading: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

To make your diary public, go here, scroll all the way down, check "public" & save changes: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

Don't trust this to tell you how many calories you burned either.

Whoops, pressed Post before I was done.

The exercise calories on here I think I ridiculously generous. I just got back from a 5.5 hour hike, I only wrote in that I was hiking for 4 hours, and it said I burned over 2,000 calories. I call BS.

Just a cursory look at your diary appears to show some logging inaccuracies. 3 ounces of banana is more like 75 calories. 15 grapes will depend on the size of the grapes. One medium apple -- medium is relative and can be off by 50 calories or more.

It doesn't look like you are weighing solid foods on a food scale. If this is the case, you are very likely underestimating your calories and overestimating your exercise burns. The good news is, this is easily fixed.

Get yourself a food scale, and learn 1) to use it to weigh foods accurately and 2) to find the correct food entries in the MFP database. The best entries have no asterisk (*) and are confirmed by hundreds or thousands of members. These entries also give a drop down menu to choose how to measure (grams is the most accurate).

I bet with some tightening of your food/exercise log, you can fix this fast. :drinker:

ETA: Read the sexypants link that editorgrrrl posted. Good stuff in that.

First, as everyone said, there could be calculation errors and your net calorie intake is higher than what is logged in.
Second, our bodies are resistant to changing at first and will try to hold onto that weight. After two months, you should have lost some weight, but this is a point to consider.
Third, if we do not get enough nutrition, our bodies will go into starvation mode. What this means is that our metabolism slows and food is turned into fat before it can be burned. You could actually be undereating.
Fourth, you could have a thyroid problem. Symptoms of hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid) include unexplained weight gain. Blood tests can be done to determine if this is the cause, and hypothyroidism can be treated with medication.

i have a fitbit, but it's definitely not accurate when it comes to calorie burn unless your body fat is exactly the average BMI - i'm not even close to the bodyfat for my BMI, so my calorie burn count is way off.

the right heart rate monitor will be a help, but mostly they, too, use generalizations. you can either get a higher end HRM or experiment and see what results are as you add or lower your calories. this will be much more effective if you weigh all food; fruits have plenty of calories from sugar, and medium to one person might be large or small to another, where an ounce is always an ounce if your scale is halfway decent.

you could have a thyroid problem, but most of the people i know who thought they did were simply eating more than they thought or burning less. still, good to be sure!

All of the advice here has been great but this is what i think: whenever I tried to lose weight I obsessed. True, gaining 3 pounds after I thought I had sufficiently changed enough of my bad habits for my body to notice would infuriate me, but it wouldn't stop there for me. I'd go into "what's the point" mode and before you knew it, I was packing on the pounds. This time I'm letting my body adjust to the changes at its own pace. I don't "yell" at it if it doesn't give me the results I want on the scale. I also stopped weighing in every day because a little number in the morning was becoming the difference between a great day and an awful day. Those numbers shouldn't have THAT much power. You may need to adjust your eating (too much or too little depends on how honest or accurate you are when you count daily intake). I found out I have been eating way too little myself. My paranoia about gaining a pound or two had me eating fewer times in the day and far less to overcompensate and, frankly, punish myself a little for needing to be on a protocol. The scale can be less of the reward/punishment Great Determinator. If you had a good day or a good week, reward yourself with a nice long hot bath, or something like this. I've been doing it this way and weighing in once a week (rather than everyday, which it sounds like you're already doing), but now I am not devastated if my body doesn't say I lost 3 pounds this week, In fact, I've been losing 1.5 a week. This is great but in the past this would lead me right to the Haagen Daz line because I'd think I've worked out for an hour a day 6 days that week and dramatically changed my eating habits. I want the scale to reflect my drama. Now I routinely reevaluate how i worked out and whether a walk was really a super slow stroll or a moderate pace. I'd relax into reflection and not panic about it. Those three pounds are not enough to convince me that your body is "betraying" you. It's a long term relationship; give your lover a moment to adjust to your new demands.