The struggle is real!!!!

No need to cut anything unless there's a medical need to do so. Weight loss is about calories, not what you eat.

Had you been losing weight more consistently before this week, or yo-yoing isnce you started? Can you open your diary?

Sassenach1017 wrote: »

Diary is now open, please don't pay attention to yesterday, not one of my best days!!! I don't have a scale, but probably something, I should invest in. I have been logging everything I eat, even the bad. I have been pretty much yo-yoing since started, maybe it's the lack of exercise on the weekends.

It's not lack of exercise, you don't need exercise to lose weight. As you say, you should invest in a food scale. This is most likely where you're going wrong - you're eating more than you think you are, which is very easy to do if you're not weighing things. Buy a food scale, weigh everything you can for a few weeks and see where you are then (and I'd also say for a day or two to measure out what you would have eaten, then weigh it to see if how many calories it actually is is the same as, more or less than what you would have put it in your diary as).

While I am very impressed that you managed to measure out your lasagna using cups (I can't imagine that is easy to do!) it is probably rather inaccurate. I am glad you're going to get a scale. You'll probably find using a scale is quicker than using cups too.

Are all the homemade recipes in your diary ones you have created yourself using the recipe builder?

When you get your scale it'd be wise to edit all your recipes weighing all the ingredients too.

Most of my recipes, each time I cook them I'll add different amounts of ingredients. So I edit them to reflect this each time I cook.

Hello,

I am about the same age as you. Started cutting calories and exercising since May. The weight loss has been quite slow. I would suggest you continue to follow your MFP recommendations and also with your exercise regimen. In June I hardly lost any weight, actually I gained. However today I dropped from 130.2 (yesterday's weigh-in) to 127.2. I am 5' 2" and started at 134 lbs. I exercise 5/6 days/wk following Fitness blender's Eight week fat loss plan round 5 and I keep my calories at 1200 or below most times. The process is slow, actually I believe it tests your persistence. Keep at it, the weight will come off. Good luck!

I just took a peek at your food diary and I agree with the other posters. You definitely need a food scale! I think it's highly likely that you're eating more than you think you are. For example, how do you know that you're eating 2 oz of pork chops without weighing it? And, 86 calories for 2 oz of pork chops also seems low to me, which leads me to my next point. You need to be careful which entries you use for foods you enter. I looked up boneless broiled pork loin chop, lean meat only (the lowest calorie of the pork chop options), in the USDA database and it showed one chop as being about 5.17 oz (so, did you have less than 1/2 a chop?) and the calories for 2 oz would be 97. Although that's only 11 calories more, that can add up over a day, especially if you actually had more than 2 oz! Say your chop was actually 3 oz, then the actual calories would be 146, which is 60 more calories than you recorded. Try to double check your entries with the USDA database and also avoid entries with * and labeled "homemade", as these tend to be less accurate.

Along the lines of precision, I noticed two meals that consisted of "mexican chicken". Unless that's a recipe that you measured and weighed out and cooked yourself, it's unlikely that a database entry would match what you had. If you're eating out, you're better off estimating the components of the meal and entering each of those and then adding a couple servings of oil and/or butter since restaurants tend to be pretty heavy on that for cooking.

While each imprecise entry might be small in itself, they do add up over the course of a day. Add that to your occasional "splurge" days or meals and that could very easily keep you at maintenance. I know for me, I only maintain if I have weekly splurge days and am less than precise with my tracking. I need to be more strict on both counts to lose.

Good luck!