Weight Loss - Not Working? :(

Might be a good thing to start measuring yourself and the portions you eat.

Unless the things you get are pre-measured single portion packages with the information on them measure! What you think is a serving size is usually larger than it actually is. Pay attention to serving sizes listed on packages items. For example, 500mL carton of chocolate milk actually contains TWO serviings per carton. Keep a stash of fresh fruits and veggies in your room for snacks and to add to what the dining hall is providing. Two - three bottles of what size of water? You are probably not drinking enough.

No, they're not pre-packaged portions, but the people who serve at the commons usually separate the food out into portions based on the serving sizes listed and we just pick up a plate usually. How would you suggest measuring serving sizes? It's about 3 20oz bottles maybe? With respect to the fruits, I usually get a serving of fruits every day, but I just don't log them because I wasn't sure what the calories would be (they weren't listed and I wasn't sure if searching would be a good idea). Would you suggest having one big meal and then having fruits and veggies as snacks throughout the day?

If you aren't logging every bite that goes in your mouth then you aren't staying within calorie guidelines. You need to search the database for that fruit, it contains more calories than you might think. Your best bet it to spread those calories out throughout the day. My avg meal is about 300-400 calories, and then low calories snacks in between.

From looking at your diet, nearly everything was processed. I didn't see anything made fresh by your own fair hand in there, so it's safe to assume there's a tonne of sodium in your diet that you don't need. Try and get some more of your nutrition from fresh fruit and veg, beans, lentils, nuts etc.

My other suggestion is to try and rebalance your intake so that you're eating a larger portion of your calories earlier in the day - your system works more slowly in the evening, so eating more than 40% of your calories in your evening meal isn't ideal.

I live in the dorms and we don't have a kitchen, so I pretty much have to rely on pre-cooked food. The closest I can get to eating non-packaged food is when I eat at restaurants/have food at the commons, but that's not a great substitute either. I am definitely going to eat lesser calories during dinner time and start balancing my diet more, and I'll try to incorporate more vegetables and nuts into my meals hereon.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Being overweight is the greater health risk when compared to food consumption. My view is, get down the weight first then work on cleaning up your diet. If you have a specific diet like "low carb" or "low sugar" or vegan/vegeterian, you can mess up 2 wys, by not sticking to the dietary guideline and over eating. If your main focus is staying under your calories, you can only mess up 1 way. Over eating. make it easy on yourself, focus on calories and clean up your diet later.

Now here is what we need to know to help you, what is your AMR(Go up to Goals and click on it. See where it says "Calories burned through daily activity" What does it say? I also need to know how many calories you're currently eating on average.

So what is your AMR(calories burned through daily activity)?
How many calories are you currently consuming?

My Goals Tab says that my AMR is 1940 calories per day. MFP recommends I eat 1330 calories per day to lose approximately 1.5lbs per week and I usually stick to that amount (mostly slightly lesser by like 50 calories or so, and once in a while, over by 50-100 calories). I also exercise daily and burn around 200-300 calories every day, so I add that to my calorie intake. So I guess I consume approximately 1500-1600 calories, while I burn 200-300 calories.

Okay MFP is dead wrong about that thing. I wrote a topic about it. the thing A calorie deficit should beat 15-20%. If it's greater than 20%, you will lose muscle mass, and from a hormonal perspective, it will slow down your thyroid slowing down your metabolism even more. So you have 2 things working against you when your calorie intake is to low.

If your AMR = 1950 calories.
and you're eating 1350 calories.

That's a 31% deficit, THIS IS HUGE, you're suffering from a slowed metabolic rate due to consuming too low calories, and possible loss of muscle mass.

To do a 20% deficit you should eat 1550 calories. This is where it works against you being a woman. Women are smaller, have less muscle mass and burn less calories. With this deficit you have reduced your calorie intake by 360 calories,. It should take you about 10 days to lose 1lbs of fat. YOU CAN do "LOW INTENSITY" cardio and burn about 250 calories, with out eating your exercise calories which will help speed it up. The reason I said low intensity cardio is because most of the calories come from fat, and it doesn't use much glycogen(sugar in the muscle). So you can workout everyday, and recover very easily. You don't need food to burn fat on low intensity exercise.

If you do high intensity exercise, it will burn up glycogen(sugar) and you will need to replace that with diet(eat more calories).