Can Someone Help Me?

A good scale will definitely help with accuracy., I think it's an invaluable tool. But honestly, it doesn't sound tooooo bad and you may just need to hang in there. I had 6 weeks of faithful weighing, logging and deficit eating without any change on the scale; just up and down the same two pounds. They I randomly lost 6 pounds in a week. Try upping your water intake if you are regularly hitting high sodium numbers. It's always worth tweaking things like that when you're concerned, it might get something moving,

Are you taking your measurements? If they're going down steadily than I wouldn't worry too much about the scales, it'll follow eventually. Steady decreases in waist, hip and thigh is what stopped me freaking out during my apparent plateau .

Thanks for opening your diary, it's helpful. A couple of questions:

1. I notice that there's quite a lot of variation in the number of calories you log each day. Based on past conversations I've had with other users, I'm gonna have to ask: is that because you actually eat differently every day, or is it because some days you give up logging halfway through the day? A LOT OF PEOPLE do the second thing. Obviously, that won't help -- you'll have to be honest with yourself.

2. I notice there are many entries for home-made food, which can be helpful. However, it's difficult to tell if they're foods you've prepared yourself and added to the database via the recipe builder, or if you've used someone else's entry that got added to the database. Many relatively new users such as yourself do the second thing. That can be very problematic, as you simply don't know whether the way they prepared the dish was more or less caloric than the way the person who prepared the dish did for you. Obviously if you're eating out you don't have much choice, etc., but in that case I'd always advise you to use the MOST CONSERVATIVE (i.e., most high-calorie!) entry in the database you can find that looks reasonable. Learn to look at the nutritional info of database entries with a critical eye. Generally you can *sort of* trust the database entries for big brand names, chain restaurants, and the like because they tend to make their nutritional info public, and they're required to be accurate to within 25%. (That's ONLY 25% btw, and often they're actually less accurate than that because honestly, who checks?!). But anything without a brand name attached or that you didn't prepare yourself is likely to be very, very wrong.

3. Measuring foods. A lot of people don't want to measure foods when they're just starting out. It seems like a PITA, or they believe they'll have a "disordered relationship with food." That's all well and good, BUT. As a newbie it's a VERY GOOD IDEA to at least go through a measuring phase for a month or so, because it will train your eye. I see a lot of items in your diary that are solid foods but logged as 1/2 cup, etc. Chances are you're underestimating those. You might be inclined to argue "but it can't add up to that much." TRUST ME. IT CAN. If you're 25% off on bready things, buttery things, potato-y things, peanut buttery things, sugary things, even microwave popcorn, it can add up to a lot of calories ALARMINGLY FAST. A food scale is best for solid foods. They're cheap and easy to use for any foods you prepare or plate up at home.

4. I'm not going to food shame you for what you're eating -- I don't think that's constructive! But I will just say that I notice you eat a lot of high sodium foods, like take-out and restaurant foods, etc.. That's not going to have ANY negative effect on fat loss over the long term and is nothing to worry about (see, not food shaming!). HOWEVER. It can make it difficult for your fat loss to show up as "weight" loss on the scale over short periods of time like a month. People who are retaining water can be losing fat without seeming to lose "weight" based on scale measurements for actually WEEKS, then suddenly "whoosh" the water weight away in quick spurts. {shrug} It happens.

TLDR: You've been at this for 35 days, and you've lost 2.7 pounds -- congratulations! It is not at all unusual for relative newbies like yourself to see limited results like this at first while you figure out how to use the logging features accurately and consistently. I know a lot of people report very fast losses at first, then slow down, but it can happen the other way too, especially if you need some practice and experience logging.

I would say stick to your calorie goal for now - I don't think you need to think about increasing it yet! It sounds like you're being very do,invent and honest about this so my advice, for what's it worth would be to
1. Measure yourself! The scale is absolutely not the on,y or best measure of success, especially not in the short term. Just because you haven't gone didn't a dress size yet doesn't mean you haven't lost on measurement.
2. Pick up that food scale
3. More water and/or less sodium (we've all been there with periods where calories haven't come from the best source, no big deal, life happens, you'll sort it out when you can.
4. That dreaded P word... Patience. Do this for a couple of weeks at least before you worry about the scale again

PSi rarely eat back exercise calories. I don't care what anyone says about it being necessary, I feel good and this works for me, I only do it when I really feel my body demand it. But even then never 100 per cent - I just don't trust the burns given, they seem way too high.

Thank you for your insight and thoughts and most of all for not food shaming me.

1. I am logging everything that I eat. I make it point to sit down after every meal and log in everything that I have had. I know that my days seem erratic but most days I dont eat a lot, the days with higher amounts I am making myself eat extra to get closer to the requirement.

2. I am a stay at home mom and have a degree in culinary arts, so yes a lot of my meals tend to be home made. I prefer that to pre packaged foods. I try to always use the bar codes provided on the packages of each item to get the nutritional info or in the case of a fast food place, I will ask for their pamphlet to get the info or look it up on their website. I know that it isn't exact but it's the best I can do. I do occasionally use the items that someone else has added but, once again I try to read through all the choices provided and average what would be the best, and usually I do choose the highest amount, just to be on the safe side.

3. I measure everything! Like I said above, I have been slacking on buying a scale, simply because I don't think about it when in town, but I will make it a point to pick one up tomorrow. Although I am new to MFP I am not new to counting calories or measuring/weighing foods, as I did weight watchers in the past.

4. Yes, lately I have been eating a lot og high sodium take out foods. I have been hating that, but life has been busy and oft times that means eating on the go. Time to pack a lunch when I can.

1. I'm reading between the lines on your response here (as well as some things you've said in other comments), but you sound a bit overly concerned to me with "not eating a lot." 1300 calories is rather low for someone your size and activity level. Obviously you want a caloric deficit, but do be careful about attaching moral virtue to the idea of eating very little. The ideal situation for many of us is where you actually CAN eat a lot and still lose weight! (e.g., by choosing more nutrient-dense foods over calorie-dense foods; by getting fitter and improving your body composition so you're using your lean body mass to burn calories like a freakin' humvee, etc.).

::I:: eat "a lot." It's not because I'm a special snowflake with a "superior" metabolism, or I wouldn't have gotten super-obese in the first place, or had so much trouble losing weight in the past. It's because a lot (not all!) of my food volume is more nutrient- than calorie-dense, so MOAR VOLUME (I ate almost 4 pounds of eggplant this week and MAN am I full!); and because I've been very successful so far at using resistance training to maximize fat mass loss and minimize lean body mass loss so MOAR CALORIES. I'm not saying that's what YOU need to do -- I'm just saying there's more than one way to skin a cat and one way isn't more virtuous than another.

Just food for thought. Which ... has no calories, so.

2. If you're cooking for yourself -- great! Personally I think those of us who like to and are willing to cook for ourselves have a HUGE advantage in this diet game (though again, it's not necessarily "virtuous"). But just the same, my question about whether you're using the database or the recipe builder for your home-made foods is a valid one. I know plenty of people (one of my best MFP friends in fact!) who cook extensively for themselves and their families, but frequently use other people's (or restaurant) database entries for the dish for whatever reason. MFP's recipe-builder has a MADDENINGLY poorly user-interface, but it's THERE and still your best tool for food you cook yourself.

And, ah, the bar codes! As you dive deeper into the database, you'll find that there are multiple entries for almost everything -- including packaged foods with bar codes. Some of them are accurate, some of them are ... less so. When you use the bar code, you may or may not be getting the accurate entries. It probably doesn't add up to much, but be cautious when it's a calorie-dense product like peanut butter, mayonnaise, butter, etc., because small inaccuracies will be more important there.

3. Again, please don't take my referring to you as a "newbie" as an attack or a slight. You may be experienced in counting calories, but you are a newbie to using the MFP database. It takes time to learn how to spot and avoid the many, many, MANY inaccuracies in there. It may have the biggest, most extensive food database out there, but that's only because it's got so many duplicates and user-submitted inaccurate entries. I love MFP -- it's why I'm still here, right? -- and I'm not slamming it; using MFP I have much more control over the ease and accuracy with logging compared to the other sites I know. But you do have to know its quirks to get the most out of it. Honestly, once you've been on here more than 6 months, I'd challenge you at that point to go back and look at how you were logging at the beginning. 15 months in, and I log really differently from the way I logged my first 6 months.

4. And once more, with the anti-virtue, anti-food-shaming here. Keep eating salty foods if they make you blissfully happy or are just too insanely convenient, etc. After all, you'll stick to your plan much longer if it's EASY TO STICK TO.* I only brought this up to advise you to be PATIENT. 35 days is NOTHING in terms of watching your results. If you weigh in the 180s, you SHOULDN'T be losing more than 1 lb a week probably, unless you're very very short. If you've been averaging 1/2 lb per week and you've only been tracking for about one menstrual cycle (RELEVANT!) you're doing FINE. I find you really have to go through more than one menstrual cycle to have a handle on your average loss rate. Partly because many women's loss patterns are closely linked to their cycle, and then partly because *kitten* happens, especially with sodium. It's entirely possible you really HAVE lost 5 lbs of fat in this time, not 2.7; you just need to give it time to show up on the scale. Especially if the lag is sodium-related, the good stuff has already happened. When the scale shows it is really not meaningful. It'll show up eventually and your average will appear higher (and more accurate). Unless you have a diagnosed health problem, you don't NEED to lower your sodium, though if lowering it will help you with the mental health mindf*ck part of seeing results (LAWD, I get that!), then godspeed.

*When people ask me "my secret" to losing weight, I say: it's conquering the mindf*ck of dieting. Sometimes you don't see results and it's discouraging and makes you want to quit, particularly if your diet and exercise plan is unpleasant. So keeping the plan simple and enjoyable helps make it easier to stick to when things don't seem to be working. Don't make yourself miserable eating so little food you're hungry or weak or feeling deprived. Eat delicious food -- heck eat CONVENIENT food -- but do it mindfully. Have a plan and stick to it. TRUST THE DEFICIT even when you don't see results right away. TRUST THE DEFICIT when you get stuck for weeks. The scale is a liar, and the fat loss will show up.