EATING MY CALORIES AND STILL GAINING

If I go over on sodium, I gain weight.

i stopped weighing myself a while ago and just go by how my clothes fit. my scale tells me i've either stayed the same or gained (since August) but my clothes fit fine (and in some cases are looser)

I am not eating all my calories; burning between 350-400 calories per workout - 6 days a week; and I am not losing either ! I have been doing this for 6 weeks. The first 4 weeks I lost 8 pounds, now nothing. I totally understand your frustration !!! What are we doing wrong???!!

Alright guys pretty discouraged. Eating my prescribed 1200 calories, measuring, weighing, and counting every snack. Exercising 5 days a week for 1 1/2 hours burning between 600-750 calories.... WHY AM I STILL GAINING??? I get that I might be making muscle but when and how long will I have to wait for the scale to budge??

Are you eating your exercise calories?
Also, you cannot gain muscle on a deficit unless you are a flatout beginner which would be about 1 pound, nothing more. If you opened your diary, it would be helpful?

Are you eating any of your exercise calories that you burned back? IF NOT its very likely that you are only netting about 500 calories a day. (1200 eaten -700 burned =500)

Also are you watching your sodium intake and increasing your water intake. Water weight can add serious weight to you and make you hold on to weight.

Sometimes the scale has a delayed reaction to the work you are doing... I have went a whole week before without seeing results and then all of a sudden then it'd start falling off.

I am relatively new at this myself... But I think its VERY likely you are not eating enough calories! I have about the same amount to lose and I started this journey eating way more than 1200 calories a day - and as you can see (from my ticker) its helped. I'm still not at 1200 cals a day and I have already lost 30 lbs. You may need to up them some.

***Sending you a friend request, because we have similar goals.

Also, are you taking your measurements? Sometimes, as my wife says, "the scale is not our friend!" Your body could be going in while the scale is going up!

Also, as other people have said, yes it's possible to have some muscle gain, but this happens much slower than people might like to believe.

Muscle gain is far too readily used as an excuse for not losing weight. Even for beginners (beginners gain muscle faster at first) you wont gain more than perhaps 2-3lbs a month (admittedly a bit of a guesstimate), and to do that you would have to be lifting heavy weights consistently and keeping up an excellent supply of protein. More realistically you'd gain a lot less than that.

So in short, msucle gain isn't your problem.

Get a food scale to make sure your portions are correct.

This!! If you haven't done so already, be sure you're measuring everything and measuring it accurately!! You may be eating more than you think...

I tell everyone to look at your sodium and potassium intake. These two nutrients create the balance of water in our bodies. Too much sodium and/or not enough potassium will cause water retention and it will look like a gain on the scale.

try eating 1200-1500 cals a day

There are three things you can do, BMR (do you know yours), you need to be eating a bit over that number at least, that is what you body needs just to fuel your system and it takes energy to burn fat.
Examine your diet, weigh, measure, and look at what you are eating, looks like you have littles, are you eating on the run or on a plan. Prepared food or food you fix yourself, white flour, potatoes, added sugars (not fruit and veggie sugars), white rice, and tons of sodium can all interfere with results.
Are you using a HRM to get your calories (not entirely accurate depending on brand can be a bit high so I don't ever eat more than half of my exercise calories).
If you have toddlers did you take child maintenance into your activity level when you started, I really think your calories may be a little low for getting it done. However could be any of the previous ones. I fell for the whole 1200 calories at the beginning and went with along plateau, upped my calories and have been losing consistently since.

Pls hang in there!

this is opposite of what everyone else is saying but I went over two months with no loss-once I DROPPED my calories I started losing. It worked for me.

Alright guys pretty discouraged. Eating my prescribed 1200 calories, measuring, weighing, and counting every snack. Exercising 5 days a week for 1 1/2 hours burning between 600-750 calories.... WHY AM I STILL GAINING??? I get that I might be making muscle but when and how long will I have to wait for the scale to budge??

It may never budge...
Reason being is that MUSCLE weighs MORE than FAT.....so lets say you're 150lbs......when you burn off the fat, and you are still 150lbs, that's all muscle...lean muscle, not blubbery fat on your body.

You have to remember that DROPPING your calories to an amount that is way lower than what your body requires, will send your body into "starvation mode". What happens here, is that your body needs energy, if you are not providing the necessary energy required during the day via food, the body will take it from itself. Because muscle is a more pure source of energy, it will "eat" the muscle FIRST in order to gain the amount of energy needed to survive during a day.
People who starve themselves think it will eat away the fat....this is not so, not at first. You lose muscle first because it is a richer source for the body.