Help Please, repost/update

*warning - this may be long and rambling*

I am approaching my one year anniversary here and have been overall happy with my progress. I went into this and am still looking at this as a lifestyle change, not a diet.

For the most part, I am not discouraged, but have been finding myself starting to get a little discouraged because I am just not seeing any results. I mean I am not seeing any lost inches anywhere, no weight loss. This will go on for weeks, sometimes 4-6 at a time and then minimal loss, like half a pound or so.

I am prepared to accept my weight the way I am now if it never goes down any because I know I am healthier and eating better than I was before I started this, but I am nowhere near what my weight should be according to health/fitness charts and honestly, even my goal was set to about 15-20 lbs more than what charts recommend and I will be happy with that. I keep telling myself and believe that this is not a race and I am not really in any real hurry to get to my goal, but I just can't help but feel that I am doing something wrong.

I realize loss will slow down as you get closer to goal but I am still a good 35 lbs away from my goal.

Just when I think I have the numbers and ideas down pat, I get confused again. When I first stalled for a good length of time, I re-evaluated and I really think at that time I was eating too little, so I increased my calories. I did start losing again but then stalled again, panicked and decreased calories again. And have been basically repeating that cycle over the past 6 months.

This last time I swore I was not going to decrease calories again, but I did.

I used to eat a LOT of processed crap and fast food and probably was in major starvation mode as I rarely at more than once a day and then of course would overeat on crap.

I still don't eat completely "clean" but have cleaned up my eating considerably from what it used to be. I drink at least my 8 glasses of water most days, I try to aim for 5 fruits/veggies a day and most days achieve that. I watch my sodium and sometimes go over, but again, it *HAS* to be better than it used to be.

I started out very slowly with exercise and worked my way up to what I am doing now. Right now, I am doing Zumba 4 days a week and sometimes will go one other day to the gym and walk treadmill at a good pace for 30-45 minutes.

Right now however, I joined a challenge at my local gym because I thought it would be fun to shake things up a bit for one thing and for another, if you complete the challenge you get 2 free months membership happy So, the challenge is to exercise 7 days a week for at least 30 minutes each day and then one of those days do an extra workout of whatever the challenge is that particular week in addition to your regular workout. (This week it was 10 minutes on stationary bike, 10 minutes on stairclimber, 10 minutes on treadmill and 10 minutes on elliptical and we had to do 30 sit-ups and 30 push-ups in between each of those machines and I am STILL sore as he!! from doing that on Monday, but, I digress...)

So I'm 1.5 weeks into the challenge and will be exercising 7 days a week for the next 4.5 weeks if all goes according to plan.

I usually do eat my exercise calories or at least most of them. My diary is public so feel free to point out areas where I may need to work or adjust or anything (please be gentle! lol ) Some days when I am way under my calorie goal though it is because I am trying to keep at or under ALL of my settings that I am watching and it just seems impossible. I may have 500 calories left, but be at my limit for sodium or sugar or fat and unless I can find something that has NONE of those added, then I will be over on one or all of the other goals. It seems impossible some days to stay under everything.

Oh, and I was out of town Sat through Tuesday this week, so those days I can already tell you were crap. I was over almost all of those days even if it was only a little and it was nearly all eating out of restaurants, so... bleh. But other than those days, the rest of them are pretty much how I normally am eating.

I am open to suggestions. I still don't know at this point if I am eating too few calories or too many. My setting is to lose 1.5 lbs per week I believe.


UPDATE:
Just an update: I added in some more nuts to my snacks this week, did a few days where I added some strength/weight training. I borrowed a heart rate monitor and put in all my information so that it was accurate for me and wore it to my zumba class and the good news is I wasn't far off at all on my calorie calculations - I have been logging in 500 calories burned for a 45 minute class and the HRM said I burned 485.

Step on the scale this morning and still NOTHING. ARGH. I am going to keep doing what I am doing but it is sure getting frustrating. I also think I am going to increase my calories again.

Someone mentioned going back to the initial setup and retaking the profile questionnaire on here though. How do you do that? I have gone in to change goals, but is that the same thing?

Any other suggestions for breaking through a LONG plateau?? If I were losing inches I wouldn't complain. But I am seeing no changes on measurements or the scale.