How did I gain??

Are you using a food scale?

Are you entering everything you eat into the food diary?

What rate of weight loss per week did you choose?

ajc109 wrote: »

Been using mfp for nearly 5 weeks now. Lost 5lbs during week 3 and have not seen anymore come off since. Weighed myself this morning and I've gained 1 and a half lbs...

Mfp has me at 1260 cals, I'm 5"3, 202lbs and want to get to 135lbs.

I weigh and log everything I eat and do 40 mins of cardio 4-5 times a week. I don't eat back my exercise calories. I had a couple of bad days where I over ate at birthday parties but don't think that would have cancelled out my deficit.

Many people find that, when starting out, they lose a lot in the first couple of weeks then it seems like they are not losing. The human body is weird. Often, it decides to lose extra water weight when a new eating pattern is introduced. Eventually it goes "oopsie, I dropped too much water weight and now I need to regain some of it" so weight loss stalls or a person might even gain a small amount. Eventually everything is evened out. Most people find it takes about 6 weeks to go through this cycle.

Look at your average weekly loss. Chances are it will be really close to what your goal was.

Im 5'2 started at 225 with 1300 cals no exercise lost 30 pounds then incorporated exercise. I went down to 1200 at one point and initially lost but once I started exercising I didnt lose anymore for more than two weeks. I know that intense workouts can cause water retention but I found that actually upping my calories to 1400/1500 actually got the scale moving again.
There are alot of factors to why the scale doesnt move or even go up and 9/10 its water weight. Last week i gained 2 pounds because of my period and was stuck there all week. Yesterday Im down 3 pounds again.
Overall Ive lost 47 pounds and can tell you that there was alot of playing around with calories to find what works for me.
Dont get discouraged the journey is hard but its worth it.

Do you log everything? did you log the extra you ate at those birthday parties? it can be easy to wipe out the deficit, but logging everything will keep you right, and if you know you had an overall deficit then its just a matter of time before the scales will show the loss.

I got on the scale this morning and I've gained 3.1kg (6.8lbs) over the past 2 days for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever. Body weight is weird. It happens so there's no use stressing about it.

Isolated individual weigh in results don't mean a thing. There are way to many factors influencing that number to pay it much attention.