Scales not moving.. advice?

If it's only been two weeks, then yeah water weight from your monthly cycle or the increased exercise would be my first guess. Drink plenty of fluids and see if you can wait it out.

Otherwise, again, we don't have a lot of details. Your diary is closed. You haven't said how well you track, what kind of exercise or how often, whether or not you're eating exercise calories or using any kind of activity tracker, do you scan barcodes, use a food scale, use the recipe builder, trust outside websites, etc. We don't have a lot of information to help troubleshoot this. If you want to give us more details or set your diary to public temporarily, it might help.

Otherwise, this would be my generic advice:

1. If it's been less than 3 weeks or so, don't sweat it! Normal fluctuations happen and unfortunately sometimes we stall for a week or two even when we're doing everything right.

2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.

3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one and use it for everything. Everything. For a couple of weeks to see what kind of discrepancies you're running into. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.

4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries. Don't trust the barcode scanner or restaurant entries 100%.

5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.

6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.

7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.

8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight, happy scale, or libra to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.

9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.

Sound like it could be a mix of starting your cycle and beginning to workout! Your muscles are contracting and holding onto as much water in your system as possible! Try to drink more water and keep doing what you're doing. Muscle weighs more than fat, so even if the scale doesnt change, it doesnt mean you arent making progress! Good luck!

Most women really don't need to worry about gaining too much muscle. Without taking testosterone or having a hormonal imbalance, you are quite unlikely to get bulky from muscle. Remember, muscle allows you to *do* more things, and fat takes up much more volume. You will get smaller while losing fat even if you gain some muscle. Stay with it.