I feel I should have hit my goal weight by now

What is your current weight, height and age?
I already can see that your a guy and I know that MFP's minimum for guys is 1500 calories. I am inclined to believe that you are too close to your goal weight to have a 1000 calorie deficit every day. It's similar to how if I try to set my goal to 2 lbs per week, at my current weight and activity level, I will get 1200 calories (minimum for women) and my deficit will actually only be 610 calories (which is roughly 1.2 lbs per week).

Once your close to a healthy weight or in the healthy weight range for your height, it becomes really hard to achieve a high enough deficit to lose 2 lbs per week without doing something unhealthy.

shadow2soul wrote: »

What is your current weight, height and age?
I already can see that your a guy and I know that MFP's minimum for guys is 1500 calories. I am inclined to believe that you are too close to your goal weight to have a 1000 calorie deficit every day. It's similar to how if I try to set my goal to 2 lbs per week, at my current weight and activity level, I will get 1200 calories (minimum for women) and my deficit will actually only be 610 calories (which is roughly 1.2 lbs per week).

Once your close to a healthy weight or in the healthy weight range for your height, it becomes really hard to achieve a high enough deficit to lose 2 lbs per week without doing something unhealthy.

This is a really good point - I'd found the same as well.

It's worth checking out what your maintainance calories would be - so you can see if this is actually a 1,000 calories a day deficit - or if the full deficit has not been applied (because it'd take you below a safe minimum level of calorie consumption).

I should have met my goal by now too, but I haven't because I haven't stuck to my calorie goal every single day. No big deal, just keep going and it will come off. It's okay to lose slowly, just don't give up.

Credits to: lemonlionheart

Could you been gaining muscle aswell.. with all the excerise your doing. Weightlighting?? Lol

chrisssiex23x wrote: »

Could you been gaining muscle aswell.. with all the excerise your doing. Weightlighting?? Lol

amellidon wrote: »

I was under the impression I was gaining muscle until I saw that im 21% bf which I was at 8 months ago

Doubtful if you're only eating 1500 calories. Muscle (or really any bodily mass) takes building block to create it - in the form of caloric energy. It can't be created from nothing.

I still can't see your diary FWIW

janejellyroll wrote: »

It looks like you're using quick add to just enter a number of calories each day. How are you determining how many calories you are actually eating?

Yeah...that's not really the point of logging.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're probably underestimating your caloric intake by hundreds of calories each day.

amellidon wrote: »

I just do it because I get annoyed logging in every single thing but I know the exact calories to everything I eat. Its mostly grilled chicken, slices of wheat bread, white rice, boiled eggs. I don't eat out at places unless I can look up their calorie content. I do feel the calories burned might be overstated but that's based on what they have in the system. I let it slide because I feel any overestimation would be negated by the additional weightlifting I do that I do not enter.

Unfortunately, it will be impossible for us to tell if you have any logging issues (which can be really common, many of us have made them) without seeing how you're logging. If you're eating back exercise calories, then the over-estimation in the database could certainly be an issue for you -- the calories burned during weightlifting may not be enough to compensate.

My guess: there may be an issue with your logging and you are eating more than you think you are (or burning less than you think you are) and that is what is causing the discrepancy between what you expect to lose and what you're losing.

amellidon wrote: »

Hey so I was at 1500 cals for 2 pounds a week weight loss but I have barely lost any weight. Do I have to go lower than 1500? I know I have a couple of high calorie days but my average each week has been pretty much on target. Attached is the breakout of my last 90 days.

http://imgur.com/3i4zXu4

Your graph explains a lot.

If your -2lb per week goal gives you a calorie intake of 1500 per day, then that means that each time you eat over 2500 calories in a day, all of those extra calories will begin to undo the deficit that you've worked on.

So it's great that you've lost some weight over this time, but not really surprising that you haven't been reaching your -2lb per week goal if you haven't been logging accurately.