What am I doing wrong?

Just so you know a lot of italics together can be hard to read for some people (including me).

How are you measuring body fat?

How tall are you and what do you weigh? What is your current weight?

While you are noting your food, are you actually measuring and weighing all your food and drink?

There isn't a super-accurate way to measure body fat percentage. Scales are notoriously inaccurate for that.

Put your info into MyFitnessPal and it will tell you how many calories to eat. Add back 25-50% of your exercise calories. Don't go below 1200 calories.

Read through the flowchart above to try to narrow down where you might be having difficulties.

kat160505 wrote: »

Apologies, I dont know why it put my writing in italics - that wasnt my intention!
I had been informed that reducing my calories to 1200 would help with losing weight, what should I be reducing them to?
I weigh all my food intake, even whilst at work as I take in premade and pre-weighed lunches.
I do not eat back my calories burned.
Im not really trying to lose weight overall, more of reduce fat percentage

Just to clarify you mention you reduced calories to 1200 to help losing weight, but then say you don't want to lose weight overall, but in the first post you are concerned you are not losing weight? I take it you are already in the healthy weight range for your height, looking to lose body fat but increase lean body mass?

If you are happy with your weight but want to reduce body fat % while increasing lean body mass, you can eat at maintenance and look at doing some weight/resistance training as well as your cardio, but you may want to reduce the amount of cardio you are doing.

Set your MFP to either maintain (if you don't want to lose weight) and follow the calories set by MFP.

I cant see your diary so I cant see exactly what you are eating which makes a big difference. In order for you to effectively burn stored fat you need to reduce your sugars considerably and lower your carbs as well. When the body tops out of natural glucose that is stored in your muscles and organs it turns to look for a source of energy. If there is excess sugar in your body that's what your body will burn. If there is no sugar for your body to burn then it turns to your stored fat and then you will effectively burn more fat. Google "becoming fat adapted"

Could be that you're eating more than you think, or your muscles are retaining water because you just started exercising. Just too early to worry, IMO.

kat160505 wrote: »

Fat percentage initially seemed to be decreasing, 1st week 28%, 2nd 26%, 3rd 25% and then last week 32%

If I'm understanding you, these are based on a scale at the gym and you weigh only when at the gym. Body fat scales are not accurate, and they are especially thrown off by changes in water weight, which means that for even a trend to be helpful (and even then there will be weird off results) you need to weigh at the same time every day, typically first thing in the morning to minimize the effect of food consumption. Weighing at the gym stuff like hydration, the effect of the workout, the fact it's likely at different times and you would have eaten different things, I wouldn't expect it to be meaningful at all.

And that includes the initial jump from 15% to 25%. 15% is really low for a woman, and 25% isn't bad (and may well be higher than the reality), even though I can understand wanting to decrease it some. I'd focus on how you look in the mirror (there are photos online showing women at different BF% to help with an estimate) and, of course, measurements and how your clothes fit.

With the fact that you want to lose so little and are more concerned about BF%, eating with a small deficit (not 1200 calories -- set up MFP with .5 lb/week or try the calculator here http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/) and making sure you get enough protein (about .6-.8 g/lb is usually recommended) are important.

You probably aren't eating 1200 now -- it can be hard to get logging accurate at first and someone could give you pointers if you opened your diary. However, it's possible you are but gained some water weight due to the new workouts and maybe have unconsciously started moving less in other ways because you are undereating and that has masked actual losses. The first is more likely, as 1200 would be way below your maintenance level.