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

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.

What all these other wonderful people said! I've been on MFP almost a year now and lost 30 lbs in the first 7 months-ish... but have only lost about 2 lbs in the last 4 months. Am trying to change it up a little to trick my body into losing weight again, with more intense cardio and more instances where I lift weights... My toughest challenge though is drinking enough water and staying under my sodium maximum!! I suspect that might be part of my issue .

I think bad weeks are part of the deal. It happens. You had a lot going on with your body at once. I personally would have dropped in my tracks. Take the bad weeks as they come and continue reaching for progress. You'll get em' next week...or you won't. Keep plugging anyway. Oh, and look at all the heavy hitters that have answered before me. They did, what makes you think you won't? :laugh:

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!

SO true!

It's a process. Don't weigh yourself everyday if it is going to sabotage you. Have a cheat day, and eat small meals 6-8 times a day and exercse for at least 30 minutes 4-5 days a week and it will come off. Slowly, but it will work. Try to keep your heart rate in the fat burning zone when you exercise 60-70% max.

Medication may impact you weight loss. For the ladies, that time of month really plays havoc with the scale.

My thoughts are:

Stop Weighing Daily! If that is causing you emotional issue and you're already taking meds along that line, then don't add something back that will make you upset. Pick a weigh day and stick to it.

Consider the daily nutrient goals that MFP gives you. Are you going over on carbs?

Drink your fluids and consider giving up soda. Lots of sodium in those diet soda...and phosphoric acid is bad for the bones.

Don't undereat and don't do it consistently. It throws the body into starvation mode and that's not a fun coaster ride.

Balance your calories out into set meal times. I get 1500/day so I average 500 for morning, 500 for afternoon, and 500 for evening...most of the time.

Talk to your doctor. They may be able to provide you more insight.