At a stand still advice anyone?

Beginning dec/10 i started loosing weight, i got down to 95 lbs less! Which is great! Then i discovered this in dec/11 and love MFP! I had not really excersised much this whole time loosing weight, maybe a 30 min bike ride here and there! Once i got on MFP i really got into working out, i do the jillian michaels 30 day shred, a few days a week for about a month now, and have been riding my bike up to 7.5 miles or 45 mins as well a few days a week, averaging working out five days a week sometimes, 30 mins sometime 60 mins! Ive been just hitting my calories of 1200! I have hardly lost anything since i joined MFP 2 months ago! Im very frustrated, yet i know i have dropped about a size so im loosing a few inches! But still. I am 156 lbs on an average and would really like to see myself less then that! Why am i not loosing??!!?? I keep telling myself its the building of muscle that i didnt build the whole year while loosing but its getten discouraging! Please any advice would be great!

Just not sure if i started eating more since i have a calorie goal now? Or am not eating enough since it always says starvation mode when i log out? So confused, or is it the excersising! Gaining muscle?

Wow, 95lbs! Congratulations on your weight loss! Unfortunately, the less you have to lose, the slower it will go. You won't be able to lose weight as quickly and you will have less room for error. Be careful to accurately log calories and exercise. If you are getting the little message that you are not eating enough, then you do need to be eating more, and at least some of those exercise calories back (I say some because often calorie burn can be overestimated). You say that you have dropped a size since starting? That's excellent! Keep up the good work.

Do you have any idea how many calories you were taking in before starting MFP?

If you can already tell you've dropped a clothing size, then it definitely sounds like you're shrinking which is far more important than that number on the scale, if you ask me. Congrats! If you haven't yet, grab a measuring tape and record your measurements here. The scale only tells part of the tale, and since no one else can see it but you, it's the least important part, IMHO. Measure yourself every week or two and you'll get the other part.

As far as the calories, if you're getting the message that you aren't eating enough, then you probably are not. Now that you have much less to lose, you really need to eat more if you want to keep losing weight, especially if you're working out. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but it really does work. I lost most of my weight at around 1200 calories plus my exercise and once I got to the last 5 pounds I switched it to 1400 calories plus my exercise. You lose it more slowly but you DO lose and if the measuring tape shows that you're shrinking....

Last week to make sure I wasn't in starvation mode I change somethings around. I kicked back my exercise and stuck around my 1200 calories and added in some serious cheat days. I'm 4'11 and I have already lost 32 pounds. Well I do know if my body has been in starvation mode I won't lose weight. So I tested this out on myself. I knew once I had some cheat days my body would grab on to it and I should gain. I didn't gain an oz! So for me it wasn't starvation mode, and I never eat back my calories I burn off exercising. My normal weight for years was around 95 to 100 pounds at 4'11 so I know through out my life there was days I never even ate close to 1200 or 1400 calories a day. So after voiding out I have not been in starvation mode, I did some research. I talked to a few trainers at my gym. We figured out my body has adapted to what I have been eating and the exercises I have been doing for a long time now. So I am now doing different things to try and get that scale moving some. I go by measurements not really the scale. But I still have some fat to lose. The scale has not moved for me in a long time. So I am doing more cardio now and changing things up so my body does not get used to the same old. So for me eating more had no effect on me as eating less did. For some odd reason.

For me after figuring out what the heck was going on, why was I at a stand still. I finally figured it out! We all are different I don't recommend you do what I did, because it could cause you to gain weight! But the advice I would give you is to eat a little more, change out your workouts and kick it into high gear and see what happens. The closer we get to our goal weight, it seems the slower things get. Good luck to you!

If you've been eating a deficit for a long time your body may become accustomed to it. Something you could try is to take two or three weeks off of eating a deficit, dial up to "maintain current weight" calorie levels. Keep exercising, just eat more every day.

After two or three weeks at maintenance, switch back to 1 pound per week loss calorie levels, or even 1/2 a pound per week.

It's worth a shot and you won't gain. You've been stuck here for a while anyway, so you have nothing to lose by trying, so to speak. Best of luck getting through your plateau!

Try eating more for a few days. Bump up the calories by about 500. Then go back to your regular eating habits. This will get your metabolism reved back up. If you tend to do the same thing routinely (eating and exercising), the body will start to stagnate. So this is a simple way to get thing rolling again.

There are many different schools of thought when it comes to losing weight/ the right ratio of carbs/protein/fat, and calorie requirements. Here are some things I've noticed that make the biggest difference for me:

1. Shock the body. Don't do the same workout week in and week out. Your body is a well oiled machine and will acclimate to best optimize for it's current level of output. Try mixing it up. Change the days you do certain exercises. Add in incline walking on the treadmill, elliptical, jump rope etc...
2. Same goes with food. Are you getting enough carbs? How much water are you drinking? Do you eat smaller meals 6 times a day? It's counter intuitive but you need to eat more to lose more. If your body feels like it's getting a steady stream of food it won't feel the need to store stuff. With that being said eat clean! 2-3 cheat meals a week to stay sane.
3. Persistence. Don't give up. Ever. You'll go through periods where you don't feel like your making progress, but your exercise should be a lifelong adventure. Just keep at it.