Help! I'm not losing!

You will probably get a lot of suggestions to eat more..................try it!

Your body might be in a rut, and you have to give it a "kick start" to motivate your system again. It seems to work........worked for me when I hit a plateau a few months ago.

Are you eating 1350 net? if you aren't you should at least start with that.

Are you taking any medication that could prevent you from losing? Always read the list of side effects on any medication.

Shock your body! Over eat one day or skip dinner then breakfast the next day. But start drinking more water.Also if your sugar is from alot of fruit really cut your fruit back I had to. I was doing the same thing and finally just shocked my body and lost. Good luck and don't give up!!

With only 16lbs to go a goal of 1.5lbs/week may be too aggressive for you. here is a guide for setting weekly goals, and on top of the initial intake you should be eating at least most of your exercise calories back as well:
If you have 75+ lbs to lose 2 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 40-75 lbs to lose 1.5 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 25-40 lbs to lose 1 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 15 -25 lbs to lose 0.5 to 1.0 lbs/week is ideal, and
If you have less than 15 lbs to lose 0.5 lbs/week is ideal.

The less you have to lose the less fat stores you have to pull from. The less fat you have to pull from the less your body wants to take any. So if your deficit is too large given your stats you will burn a large % of lean muscle. Doing the above also helps set you up for maintenance without a large increase in caloric intake all at once.

I saw on Dr. Oz the other day that taking a cold shower when you get up in the morning jump starts your metabolism. I haven't tried it out, but it seems an easy change to make.

I read an excellent report about reaching a plateau just this week. It was long but good. The summary of it was that we have three factors we can control to lose weight - calories we eat, burning calories during exercise, and weight training (because more muscle burns more calories).

When we reach a plateau AND still need to lose more weight the suggestion is to pinpoint which of those three factors is the most "out of whack" and change it.

In other words, if you are eating very little but exercising and weight training at nice levels you might want to eat more for a while. Cool, eh?

If you're working like crazy in the gym every day and not losing weight - try cutting back on those intense workouts.

And if you're pumping iron like Arnold used to, ease off on the muscle building.

I've really oversimplified things, but hopefully you get the gist of what I'm saying. I'm sure you can do a little search and find the whole article. It really seems well thought out. Good luck to you. Plateaus are normal but it's nice to know that there's a bit of strategy to get past it rather than just continuing to do what we always have done.

I am aiming for 1240 calories a day to lose 1.5 pounds a week. I usually reach about 1350, but i try to exercise at least 600 calories off a day, but sometimes I only burn 250-400. I am always about 20g under my fat allowance, but my sugar intake always runs a little over. I try to drink about 32oz of water a day and I've been trying to limit soft drinks. My exercise varies from strength training, running, walking, or dancing.

I am not losing any weight. For about two months I have remained 146! What should I do?

I hit this this as well. I exercise quite a bit so I just upped my daily cals to 1460 before exercise so lets see how that goes. I think that's the problem with 1200cals per day and the of exercise we are doing. I'm doing crossfit almost every day and running as well.

I am aiming for 1240 calories a day to lose 1.5 pounds a week. I usually reach about 1350, but i try to exercise at least 600 calories off a day, but sometimes I only burn 250-400. I am always about 20g under my fat allowance, but my sugar intake always runs a little over. I try to drink about 32oz of water a day and I've been trying to limit soft drinks. My exercise varies from strength training, running, walking, or dancing.

I am not losing any weight. For about two months I have remained 146! What should I do?

If you're following MFP's guidelines, and have your setting set to not include your workouts (ie - you're set to something like sedentary and then logging your workouts), you'll find that it keeps track of your "NET" calorie intake. That is calories in, minus calories burned doing things like working out. If you're burning an average of, say 500 calories a day, and you eat 1240 calories, then your NET calories is 1240 - 500, or 700 calories.

MFP is based on the "fuel your workouts" mantra, so if you workout over and above your usual activity, then you need to eat more to compensate. Now, this works for some people and doesn't work for others, so if one way doesn't work, the other way might.

That said, according to your profile, you only have 16lbs to lose. That's not much, assuming you're close to the "normal" or "ideal" weight for your body type. Chances are, setting to lose 1.5lbs per week is too much of a deficit, so try reducing it to half a pound per week and see if that makes a difference.

Alternatively, you could throw the scale out entirely at this point and focus on body composition (ie - lower your body fat percentage). Stop eating at a deficit and eat at or above maintenance, adjusting your diet to be more protein based. Focus more on strength training than cardio. If you lift weights, start a heavy lifting program. If you do bodyweight stuff, start a program built on building muscle and burning fat. And no, you won't get bulky (women don't have the testosterone required to build large muscles), so don't even think about arguing that.

make sure you are honestly logging.

This stuff goes in cycles, I was stuck at 235 for THREE MONTHS! Changed it up, ate less, exercised more, it is moving slowly, but moving!