Extremely disappointed in myself

Stop lying to him...muscle does NOT weigh more than fat, a pound is a pound. And don't beat yourself up, if you are losing inches then somethings working!

I litre of fat weighs less than one litre of muscle.... FACT So if he put on 15lbs of muscle and lost 12lbs of fat, he would in fact be smaller than before but weigh more...

If your clothes fit better, lay off the scale for a while and see what happens. Keep doing what your doing and you will be very surprised with the results, and very pleased the next time you do the scale. I had to do that for a while, Just relied on my clothes fitting better, next time I stepped on the scale at the Dr.'s office, 15 lbs were gone!! (too bad breaking my knee put them right back on) but im starting over, tomorrow is a new day. My advice~~

Stop lying to him...muscle does NOT weigh more than fat, a pound is a pound. And don't beat yourself up, if you are losing inches then somethings working!

I litre of fat weighs less than one litre of muscle.... FACT So if he put on 15lbs of muscle and lost 12lbs of fat, he would in fact be smaller than before but weigh more...

Not to be too trollish but I really don't understand your logic. It doesn't really matter whether you're talking about fat, muscle, granite or steel, 15 lbs is always going to weigh more than 12 lbs.

your doing really well keep at it

There's support, and then there is meaningless praise. This falls into the second category. If the OP started in May and has, over six months, gained three pounds, that isn't really well and he should not keep doing things the same.

OP: You may be sick of peoples advice, and that's okay, but I still want to try. It's great that you are making an effort to lose weight and start living a healthier lifestyle, and believe me, I and most of the people using MFP know how hard it can be. I know you can do it. The best advice I ever saw, about weight loss or most of life's problems, is that when things aren't working you need to stop, take a deep breath, and reevaluate. I looked back through your food diary for the past few weeks and what I see is that you aren't very consistent about logging. I would start there - get in the habit of logging every bite that goes in your mouth consistently. Don't worry the food being perfect. A lot of people will tell you that your protein has to be a certain level, or that you need to limit your carbs and sugar to succeed, and sure, eventually, that's true. But right now, and for at least the next 100 pounds, you just need to stay at/under your calorie goal. As for that, rerun your MFP goal. Is 1500 what the site gave you? It seems pretty low. Rerun it and be honest about your activity level (you live with your parents and aren't working, so I'm guessing that not counting workouts, you are sedentary or lightly active). If you are eating enough calories a day, you don't need to cheat, right? I also would not eat back exercise calories, again for at least 100 pounds or so. Just concentrate on that one easy to remember number, and as you start to succeed, you can work on finding the protein/fat/carb balance that works for you and look at your sodium, fiber and sugar levels to make sure they are within the ranges recommended for health. You're exercising already, so that's great. Keep it up!
I'm a big advocate of drinking water. If feel like it's helped me a lot. You'll see varying opinions, so take that for what it's worth. You need to get a scale at home. I know it's hard, because you need one with extra capacity, but it's important to weigh yourself weekly. There is no way you can figure out what's not working when you only have one July weight and one November weight to go on. Ditto on a food scale. It's important to be accurate, because your mind will play tricks on you and we, as humans but especially as fat humans, are notoriously poor judges of serving sizes. Walmart has a 440 capacity scale for $29 on their website and they also offer a variety of food scales under $20. These are small investments that will pay off in the long run.
Last, you have to look at the things that are standing in your way and make changes. It sounds like you need to find a job, any job, to get moving so you have something to do each day besides eat, meet people, and give yourself some freedom to make choices about your food. Until you can find a job, consider volunteering.

Good luck!

your doing really well keep at it

There's support, and then there is meaningless praise. This falls into the second category. If the OP started in May and has, over six months, gained three pounds, that isn't really well and he should not keep doing things the same.

Wrong. The scale is not the end all be all of weight loss.

You apparently missed the part where the OP said he went down a shirt size and from a size 50 pants to a 46...that's a pretty big improvement!

simple enough....if your losing inches but not the lbs..its just because your gaining muscle and losing fat. Eventually the scale will go down. But dont be dissapointed in yourself. ive been going at this almost a full year and im stuck at 20lbs weight lost. i feel so much better though knowing im doing my body some good.

your doing really well keep at it

There's support, and then there is meaningless praise. This falls into the second category. If the OP started in May and has, over six months, gained three pounds, that isn't really well and he should not keep doing things the same.

Wrong. The scale is not the end all be all of weight loss.

You apparently missed the part where the OP said he went down a shirt size and from a size 50 pants to a 46...that's a pretty big improvement!

^^ Like

We are all individuals and our sizes, shapes, genres, habits, ages, activities, metabolisms, preferences, etc are different. But yet we can learn a lot from each other. What works to one, might not work to another but never mind, then we try a new approach, as long as we just continue!

If we have noticed that we most likely need to change something in the way we do this "weight management project" or lifestyle change just reading through some of these posts gives needed new ideas and perspectives. I am sure everyone here sincerely wants to help each other since we know this is not an easy task and we all also know that this is the best thing ever we can do to ourselves and the loved ones.

Not many of us has an official degrees in these subjects but since it is close to our hearts we have a lot of experience and have read tons of articles, posts and books about weight management. We still might live by some old myths so it is great to hear about new research and experiences that support them and try adjust.

It is great that you have been so active with your exercises and most likely you have got rid of pounds of fat and got muscles in change. And as so many has said before, 1 pound of muscle takes smaller space inside your skin as 1 pound of fat and that has helped you get to smaller size clothes. Good news is that when you have more muscles, your metabolism gets better so you are able to burn calories faster - this will be very very beneficial in long run. Also getting muscles shapes your body to more attractive direction. I don't know about you but for me what I see in mirror affects to my mood and motivation.

In some other post chain there was this idea of that success in weight management comes 20% from efforts in exercise and 80% from efforts in diet. I understood it so that though exercise is very important and supports our goals and maintaining them in future, the most important thing is to make permanent changes to our diet. The old one didn't keep us in the shape we wanted to have. As much we loved those foods they backfired us somehow; maybe they were not healthy and lack of right nutrients made us eat more and more or maybe they tasted TOO good (chocolate for me!) and it was too easy to eat way too much and often of them. So making changes is eventually a must.

Mathematically it is already a good change keep on eating same stuff than before but just smaller portions. If you keep on staying in your MFP limits, you will see a difference in scale numbers. But MFP is just an aid, YOU are the one who has to give it correct information so it can help you.

The better you estimate the amount of food you eat, the more accurate information MFP can give. To log your food right you might want to learn to recognize the basic sizes; cups, ounces, 50 grams,... how they look; your palm size, size of your fist, size of an apple, ... It really is good practice to measure them at least couple of weeks at home. You will learn to estimate it right quite fast and it is also good to do a check up after couple of months since the eye starts easily see amounts smaller than they actually are (been there, done that!).

Be also careful about exercise times and intensive. It's not a vigorous work out if you take long breaks or don't get sweatty, It isn't 1 hour workout (but maybe 45 mins) if you go to gym on 2 pm and leave home 3 pm and had a shower and some chats there before starting/leaving ... ;-) Try to change your exercise routines at least once a month or your body doesn't respond as well as in the begining. If your exercise is heavy type, you better eat most of your exercise calories too! It might sound controversial but many people have noticed it helps them improve their performance and strengthen their muscles since they need energy to build up.

Try new kind of sports and exercises to keep up your progress! If your exercise is always the same type, that might slower the progress; body has got too used to it and doesn't need so much effort to go through. You still might put same amount of exercise calories on your log than before but actually you use much less than in beginning. New stuff keeps your mind alert too.

The more healthy food filled with vitamins, minerals and proteins you eat, the better you feel! For me it immediately makes it more difficult to stay within my calories if I'm not eating healthy. When calories are limited, best you can do yourself is make sure that every calory comes with GOOD side effects that support your project. Ok, sure you have to pamper yourself sometimes but not too much and not too often. And when you do, log in every little bit to MFP so it stays in control.

Remember to check your goals and progress in settings time to time (once a month?) or MFP keeps giving you same calories all the time though they should be adjusted to "new you". I didn't realize this until saw it in some post and when I went to do it, had to use less calories after... :-/

Hope some of those ideas help you too, they sure have helped me. Best of luck and keep on doing what works for you and slowly slowly change the things that you know don't work so well! This is a learning journey and we'll get our degrees when we reach our goals healthy and happy and MAINTAIN them! :-)