Not losing! Need encouragement or advice!

Rest day? Yes. The areas you are exercising need a chance to recover. You actually get more benefits from the recovery period. If you really don't want a rest day just exercise different areas every other day. In other words, do something mostly core and upper body one day then something mostly legs the next. Your core and upper body get to recover on the day you're working legs and vice versa.

As far calorie loading days and your lack of weight loss: while there is quite probably some water retention disguising some fat loss, if you haven't lost more than 1.5 pounds in 2 months you are most likely eating more calories than you think you are so a calorie load day is a bad idea. Stress can effect weight loss but, again, not enough that you would not be seeing any over a 2 month period. People die from starvation and I think they are probably stressed out while it's happening so it's not going to prevent you from weight loss in the end.

Drinking more water and the combination of your macronutrients aren't going to have a lot of effect on your weight loss. It's really about calories in vs. calories out and if you aren't losing weight, you are most likely eating more calories than you think you are. It's good that you've been weighing and measuring lately. Is that when you started to see the scale move? Are you being really consistent with it? Logging absolutely everything that has calories and sticking to your goal every day? Doing those things are what will eventually bring success.

The other part of the equation is your exercise. Are you logging your exercise and eating back those calories? If yes, how are you verifying your calorie burns from exercise? MFP's calculations can be way off if you don't fall within its averages. Gym machines can be really off, too. Many people who don't own a heart rate monitor only log and eat half the calories MFP gives them to be on the safe side. Even many people who have a HRM only eat back a portion of them. You may want to play around with how you're handling that to see what works.

As usual, good advice from @SueInAz. First, congrats on the new baby! That's a life-changing experience so go easy on yourself. I'm sorry you are dealing with post-partum depression, but good for you for getting help. That should be your #1 priority. Relax a bit and don't obsess about weight loss right at this moment. That can have negative results.

It takes your body a while to recover from pregnancy, so try to be patient and accurate with your food intake. Exercise is just an extra for fitness, but it can also give you extra energy and a good mental boost as long as you don't over do it. Rest days are important.

sunnyd77 wrote: »

Opening up my diary. I use a fitbit charge hr so I'm hoping the burn is accurate. I weigh and measure my food 80% of the time. Thanks all!!

Logging 80% of the time and not sure how accurate the calorie burn is on the Charge HR leaves a really big window for discrepancies and inaccuracies..

I went back to last Friday and there really is no evidence that I can see from weighing food as it looks like a lot of estimations..

The exercise calories (eat half of them back) and tighten up the logging and actually weigh everything to gram if you can.. weight the fruit as well.. also the liquids..

Along with using a food scale you also should make sure that you use accurate entries. I can tell you right now that your celery entry is off by a lot, luckily that one is in your favor. Read this guide to help you find correct database entries.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1

sunnyd77 wrote: »

MFP says he should eat 1550 for a 1 lb loss per week. I don't log exercise since I wear a fitbit charge hr and it syncs to mfp. Maybe I should try not eating as many exercise cals and only the 1550 and see if the scale moves. I'll try only eating 25% of my exercise cals. So for example today I have about 500 exercise cals so I'll eat 125 = 1675. Something seems off so maybe that'll help!
A friend of mine is a dietician and she recommended using measuring cups instead of a scale since its easier to learn the visual portions so I've been doing it that way. I don't worry too much about vegetables, like celery and lettuce especially.

I don't worry about celery or lettuce, either, because there isn't much difference calorie-wise between 4 ounces of celery and 8 ounces. However, the thing about measuring cups is that it really depends on what you're putting in there. I'll use watermelon as an example because I remember once being shocked at how many calories it has compared to what I thought it had. Take a watermelon and cut it into 2 inch chunks. Put those chunks into a one cup measure and there's lots of empty space in there between the pieces. If instead you cut the watermelon into one inch chunks and put them in the cup there's a lot less empty space and therefore more watermelon and more calories in that cup. Now cut a single piece of watermelon that exactly fits the cup and there's no empty space and more calories in the cup. If there are pieces sticking out of the top in any of these scenarios that's more calories that aren't being accounted for. If instead of using a measuring cup you weighed out 100 grams of watermelon it wouldn't matter what size it was, 100 grams is always 100 grams and about the same amount of calories (variations in sugar content could make a slight difference, of course!). This gets even more important when you're talking about calorie-dense foods rather than fruit.

You can also learn the size of food portions by weighing your food and looking at how much equals the serving size you're trying to achieve. 4 ounces of chicken looks about the same every time.

If MFP gives you 1550 I'd stick with that as your base. Then eat back "some" of those exercise calories. Half or a quarter, whatever you're comfortable with. Use the scale to weigh food. What is a cup of chips versus an ounce? It was explained nicely with the watermelon. Once you get in the habit of doing it "by the numbers" you'll start losing weight. What activity level did you set in your MFP settings? I've got mine at sedentary and will change it if I'm losing too much (now that isn't a problem most of us have on here!).