Help...from the successful!! Please..so discouraged!

Oh, my.

Relax! You don't have to get on the scale. You won't die if you don't. Just keep doing the right things and you will lose weight. Stop thinking it all has to happen at once.

Ease up on yourself. It's not a straight line and you won't always have losses every week. Your body has lots of reasons it holds onto water and weight. Just breathe.

Relax,,,take it easy,,,you'll do fine,,,,let your body adjust to the changes and youll be a happy person later on for it,,,JD..

Make changes a little bit at a time. It takes time to change eating habits. This is a life long thing. If you don't change habits, then weight WILL return. Stay focused!

Looking quickly at your diary, I went back from when you said you were sick, you are not eating enough. You tend to under eat, some days as little as 600-800 calories...

Not to get picky, but your food choices are also not the best...(and this is coming from the person who LOVES peanut butter and jelly). Spread your food out through the day, eat more healthy...like breakfast, instead of a protein bar, have eggs, oatmeal, greek yogurt, fruit, etc....have small snacks through the day too... a mixture of carbs and lean protein...apple with string cheese,apple with 1 tbl peanut butter, hard boiled egg with fruit, plain greek yougurt with fruit...etc...

Exercise....eat...
It will come off, don't get frustrated, you can do this!

I started a the beginning of January and have only lost 5 pounds. I feel like you often. I am working so hard and doing everything I should do and I expect more! But, we need to remind ourselves that this is a marathon not a sprint. It is a lifestyle change. We are not just trying to lose weight but we are also getting healthier. I have found that just when I feel the most discouraged I finally see the scales budge! So maybe tomorrow will be a the day you see positive results. I hope so! I think this is just a lot harder now that we are no longer 20 years old...

If you've been ill your body has been concentrating on getting you better, so it's not unusual for it to hang on to what stores it has.

Is your diary accurate? Again, I know you've been ill so the past week may not be typical, but you could try to add a bit more fresh fruit and veg in there, and try not to skip meals.

Don't give up - it's a long journey!

Please do not give up! Advice - "weighing in" every day creates an expectation that you will see a change every day, and this is not reasonable. I saw someone else say that you do NOT have to get on the scale every day, and this is certainly true! I weigh myself once a week, but that my not work for you - maybe every other or every third day? Second thing, and I saw someone else also mention this - are you exercising enough? We often think that all the walking at work counts as enough exercise, but it doesn't. I would advise that when you get home from work, or at some time each day, take a power walk; I would start with 20 - 30 minutes and work up to an hour. A power walk is where you strut right along, moving your arms in time with your legs, and do not stop or slow down unless forced by traffic or people in the way - do what you can to keep moving. You will run out of breath, do not worry. And, this is a great cardio exercise as well. In any case, keep working - the health benefits are amazing, once things start to happen!

You need to log in consistently everything you eat and drink and exercise. Hard to help you when we can't see what you're doing. Eat the minimum calories, it's better to go over than stay under. See my profile, I think it's open to all, for more tips.

If you make your focus a healthy lifestyle the weight loss will follow. Be patient.

I am going through a plateau after losing 20 pounds. Think positive and stick with the MFP lifestyle. This is the only weight loss program that has worked for me and I don't even consider it a weight loss program so much as a new way of life. B

Are you eating enough? I have found that when I eat the suggested 1200 cals my weightloss slows to NOTHING! But when I eat 1300-1500 calories and even throw in one or two (not 2 in a row)1800-1900 calorie days I lose effortlessly. (kinda like zig zagging my calories) The body is smart. It fights starvation.

***Also I forgot to add are you drinking WATER? 8-10 cups of pure water a day?

doctor oz also said to have one day a week with your calories over the limit like 1800ish. and it actually helps weight loss.

If you make your focus a healthy lifestyle the weight loss will follow. Be patient.

Yes, that. Be patient. I have to remind myself constantly to just be patient.

I have lost 22 lbs since the end of October. I weigh myself every day. But I DON'T do it to see if my diet is working. I KNOW my diet will work. I approach this as a scientist.

I have food scales at home and work and weigh everything that isn't pre-packaged. I know how many calories it takes to fill me up so I can't eat any more, and I enter that if I really don't know what I ate, like at restaurants. I have tons of my own recipes entered, with portion sizes.

I know how different the portions you buy are from the portion sizes in calorie counts. Everything is super-sized. For instance, I just had a tiny sweet potato that turned out to be 1.2 portions when I weighed it. Lord knows what a normal sized sweet potato would be. If I had just logged "one small sweet potato," I would have underestimated calories by 20%. If you do that consistently, it makes the difference between losing weight and being at a plateau.

I have an iPhone and enter everything as I eat as I eat it, and I use it to make decisions about how much I will eat. (Gotta love playing with the barcode scanner!) The internet data plan from my phone carrier is expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than the medical expenses I might encounter if I don't get the weight under control, such as medications, CPAP, surgery, time off work/nursing home care, etc.

I have a treadmill at home that calculates calories based on my weight, speed, and slope. People will talk about needing heart rate monitors, but the basic physics is that lifting your body weight up and moving it is work, and work requires more energy than sitting in a chair. (And moving 220 lbs. will use up more calories than moving my weight, so you're actually at an advantage there.)

I estimated my activity level as sedentary when I registered, and I listed my goal exercise as zero, so everything I do has the immediate reward of letting me eat more. I have never exercised so much in my life, cause there's an immediate payoff.

So I get on the scale more for entertainment value. It's fun to see the weight come down. It's fun to see the little graph on my iPhone app start approximating a straight line down after a while. (The mobile app graph is much better than the one on the website, btw.)

I make sure I get sufficient nutrients, especially protein, vitamin K, and calcium, the nutrients that can't be supplied by vitamin pills. If your body is missing even one nutrient, what can it do with the calories you consume other than make fat and wait for the missing nutrients? Your body's functions are all chemical reactions, and you can't make a reaction happen with even a single reagent missing. You just get a useless mixture of the other reagents.

I understand how much sodium and fluid affect weight. If I get up in the morning and make lots of urine, I know I'm well hydrated. If not, I know that day's weight is really an underestimate, and I don't get frustrated that it's higher the next day. I know that sharp upward spikes in my weight curve will be followed by sharp downward spikes when I eat less sodium, since only water weight comes and goes that fast.

I understand that I'm trying to lose fat, and exercise builds muscle. Muscle weighs a lot. Stiff, sore muscles after exercise are stiff because they're full of fluid, and they weight even more. That isn't important weight.

I understand that two weeks is no time at all in weight loss. You're not on a diet. You've just started eating differently, and weight loss will gradually result. Concentrate on eating better and managing portions. I know someone who just started MFP a couple months ago, and when he saw his doctor, he'd lost 7 lbs. (on target) but his blood pressure was already down 10 points and his sugar was down 100 points. He's over 300 lbs and has lost and gained more than 7 lbs before without that kind of results. But the difference is what he's doing every day, not what he's accomplished in the past. Your body benefits immediately from a healthier lifestyle, long before the pounds come off.

Now, I'm a fidgety person, and having done this a while, I can see that I am losing weight faster than the 1/2 lb/week predicted by MFP. Someone else may lose weight more slowly than the prediction. Your body is individual. If you are 100% sure of your precise calories and you really aren't losing weight, then you may have to reduce your goal a little. Not a lot -- even a small amount makes a big difference when you keep it up consistently day after day. But the calorie recommendations do include that "activity level" fudge factor, and your level of activity when sitting may be less than mine. (With all due respect, if I had to lift 220 lbs just to get out of a chair, I'd fidget a lot less, too. When you get your weight down, you're going to LOVE how much less gravity weighs you down!)

People will tell you all kinds of wisdom about eating your exercise calories and upping your food calories when you stop losing. But the biggest thing that probably causes people to fail is lack of understanding of exactly what calories and nutrients they are eating.

For me in the beginning I wasn't seeing the scale move. But I kept at it. I'm trying to make an eating change forever, not just to LOSE weight so I keep plugging. I've been doing this for 7 or 8 months now and I've lost 50. It's slow going but it's a forever change. I'm in a slump right now too. I've been the same or up for two weeks now but it's moving back down again slowly. Change your mindset and don't get too discouraged.