That was disappointing

You did not lose anything....over what time period?

What is your daily calorie goal, and have you been hitting it?

How do you measure your caloric intake?

We don't have enough information to help you? What is your calorie goal? Are you measuring your food accurately? How long have you been doing this? Open your diary and we will be able to help you.

You have to be eating more than you think you are. Weigh your food, track meticulously....reduce your daily calories if you need to. I will tell you after a lifetime of dieting (I'm 50) I am currently eating 1200 calories daily and losing at the blistering rate of .5 a week. BUT...it adds up and I feel great!

Accurately track what you are eating and what you burn, and give it time. It didn't go on overnight and it won't come off overnight.

If there's one thing I learned from this website and this whole process is it's not what you eat but how much of it you're eating. And there's no way to tell unless you accurately weigh and measure.

You said: I am somewhat familiar with what to eat and what not to eat.

There's nothing you shouldn't eat unless you are allergic or have sensitivities. This is one of the biggest things I think people get hung up on (I know it's why I tried and failed in the past). Don't worry about what you are eating at first. Just be concerned with how many calories overall you are consuming and make healthy choices throughout the week. Once you get past the "I can eat anything I want? Really?" part, you'll see how easy it can be to lose if you really want to.

I eat chocolate daily and I have pizza nearly every Friday. I had ice cream last night. I usually go out to eat every Sunday. You could say I don't always eat the healthiest foods (understatement of the year), but still I have lost 25 pounds since March 1. I do have a treadmill that I use daily, and I walk my dog every night, but mostly because 1200 calories a day isn't always enough for me, plus I was a couch potato for 10 years. I needed to get up off my duff.

Edited to ask: Your profile says you have lost 19 pounds. If that's true, you are doing something right!

Also, get a fitbit and sync. You may be very unpleasantly surprised about what you're burning, as I was.

CherylanneCorsini wrote: »

Possibly you've gained some muscle, that weighs more. I biked hard every day for the first two weeks before joining here and my legs felt firmer but the scales said I didn't lose a pound. I was crushed. Then the following 2 weeks I walked every single day (10,000 steps) and I lost 3 lbs.
Stick with it.

No. Gaining muscle does not happen in a calorie deficit except under very specific and limited circumstances. The OP does not meet the criteria.

jgdb1 wrote: »

Wow, you guys all answered with such helpful information. I realized I didn't give enough info to you. I have been doing this for 2 weeks. haven't lost anything. I am measuring everything but not weighing it. I stay at or below 1230 calories a day. MommyL2015~ I have not lost 19 lbs. that was incorrect, I had that fixed in my info.
Troutsy~ I put my information in and it gave me a caloric goal for my age, weight and rate of loss that I wanted. (2lb a week). I know our bodies change as we get older but this is ridiculous.
I recently went to a holistic Dr. who told me that I am pre-diabetic. I really need to shed these pounds.

This is your problem, start weighing your food, as you're not in a deficit.

If you're still in the WW mindset of not tracking "zero point foods" that needs to change. Vegetables and fruits and spices etc all contain calories and that isn't factored into your deficit in MFP. So you'll need to weigh and track everything.

ceoverturf wrote: »

You did not lose anything....over what time period?

What is your daily calorie goal, and have you been hitting it?

How do you measure your caloric intake?

jgdb1 wrote: »

I think maybe I'm not eating enough? I know myself and I feel tired, a lot. I'm not normally feeling so dragged out.

If you are eating at a deficit, you will lose weight. You may not see it right away (water weight gained/lost, etc), but it will come off. Remember... weight loss is not linear, and there is no such thing as starvation mode. And the chart above is great.

At the beginning (first few weeks or month, everyone's a bit different) you likely will feel tired if you've set up a large deficit, but that should decrease as time goes by. Remember, your body was used to getting (for example) 125% of the calories it needed, and now you're giving it 80% of the calories it needs. To your mind, it's just a 20% deficit, but your body is going to whine for a bit because it sees a much larger drop in food intake (compared to just a few weeks ago). Throw some cravings on top of that, and it's easy to be more tired and in a worse mood than normal.

Just a suggestion based on my personal experience (to each his own)... When you feel like you're getting more tired and such, try looking at your sleeping, eating, and drinking patterns for the past 24 hours. I find that I'm more tired when something is awry on one of those pieces. Sleeping is obvious. Eating, normally I haven't spread out my calories in a way that works best for me (I tend to load about half into dinner, so it might be that I saved more like 60% instead of 50% for dinner that day). Drinking patterns.. I normally drink only water, and a lot of it. I have done it for years, and I enjoy it, so it makes me happy and wakes me up, similar to what most people experience with coffee, tea or sodas. If I haven't had enough water for the day in the morning, my afternoon might be a bit sluggish.

Everyone else has talked up the weighing, and yep, totally agree... Weigh everything, even things that give you a portion size. If your old scale is digital, that'll be your new best friend. If it's not digital, you may want to look at upgrading, because anything that makes the process easier and faster is generally worth $20 or so.

Most of us are focusing on your discussion topics about diet because, as the adage goes, you can't outrun a poor diet. If your calories in are higher than you're thinking they are, you're likely not going to be compensating adequately with the increased activity (especially since you were already active before, when you were gaining).

Overall, keep up with your tracking, and maybe tweak a few things, and it sounds like you're going to see the results you're craving!