Is this REALLY still muscle fluid from working out?

It's funny, I edited it to change the smiley so it looked less sarcastic. I do like your links better. :laugh: Imagine that.

When I started weight lifting for the first time on my "diet" I hung onto water weight for about 2 weeks and wasn't losing nearly as fast as I was before. Then I took a break from lifting for about 2 months and when I went back to it, same thing happened. Weight seemed to be hanging on and scale stopped moving. Took about 7 weeks this time before I started to see results like I was seeing before beginning the lifting.

Keep at it and just make sure that you're weighing out your foods/not accidentially overeating. The scale results will come eventually

I do log and weigh accurately. Admittedly I had a binge the other day, went over by 1000 calories but it's my first "unplanned" hiccup. I have also recently started eating back my gym calories as I'm on a (temporary) 1,200 a day plan and after a couple of weeks I started feeling really hungry in between meals so decided to start eating most of them back.
I guess I'll cut back on eating back ALL my exercise calories, and just wait it out!

Binging can also lead to water weight gain. And honestly, I think the reason you are not seeing a loss is because you are not being consistent. You're bouncing around with your calorie goals, eating back exercise calories, not eating them back, temporary plans. Just put your info into MFP to get your calorie goal. Eat back a portion of your exercise calories. Give it a few weeks, then re-evaluate to see if you need to tweak anything. You're making so many changes so frequently that you're preventing yourself from being able to pinpoint the problem. Weight loss isn't linear, especially if you're just starting and making lots of changes like adding in exercise and lifting weights. You need to give it some time to actually work before you decide it isn't working.

This went through my mind too. I do fluctuate but surely if that made a difference so many diets would be wrong. Say someone wants to eat 1000 calories every day but 2,500 on the weekends. That's a huge fluctuation but they wouldn't put on weight from that if they were still in deficit would they?
I'll only burn 200-300 calories on cardio a day, eating back half of them is only a 100-150 possible calorie fluctuation from the day before which is barely anything. On average I'll eat 1,300 a day but, even though I'm not loosing weight, I'm thinking about upping them due to feeling run down, emotional and hungry so god knows what'll happen to my weight then.

In your scenario, yes the person would likely be running a deficit. However, it's pretty hard to hit 2500 calories of healthy, nutritious food, which often means that you would be eating foods that are pre-packaged, processed, fast food or restaurant food -- all of which are high sodium foods, which would encourage water retention. If you're creating a deficit to lose 1lb, it's pretty easy to not see that on a scale if you're packing on 2-3lbs of water weight from excess sodium. Which to give you perspective, I can be up 2lbs after eating a couple slices of pizza or going for sushi (even in healthy amounts).

Feeling run down, emotional and hungry (genuinely hungry anyhow) are all signs that you're over-exercising or not properly providing your body with the fuel it needs to run. If you eat close to your BMR (which is likely higher than 1300) you'll see an increase in energy and you'll lessen binge days because you'll feel far less restricted in what you can eat on an every day basis.

While eating back that 100-150 calories doesn't sound like much to you, it'll likely let your NET calories come above 1200, which unless you're very petite or have a metabolic disorder, they should be. That 100-150 calories, over a week, works out to 700-1050 extra calories that your body needs back because it's burned far below what it needs to maintain.

Look at your goals and re-evaluate, if you're aiming to lose 2lbs a week, recognize that may not be realistic. Slow and gradual weight loss has also been proven to be the easiest to maintain, and if you develop a good relationship with food it will be easier to keep the weight off when you switch to maintenance. You'll also retain more of your lean muscle mass the slower you lose. There are a lot of pluses to taking your time.