Soo Frustrated...PLS HELP

Without knowing what you are eating and how much of it it is hard to tell you what could be the answer. What kind of cardio are you doing? Are you getting your heart rate up? Are you tired at the end of your workouts? Are you strength training with heavy weights?

1500 calories seems reasonable, but again, without knowing what you've been eating and in what quantity its going to be difficult to provide guidance.

Without knowing what you are eating and how much of it it is hard to tell you what could be the answer. What kind of cardio are you doing? Are you getting your heart rate up? Are you tired at the end of your workouts? Are you strength training with heavy weights?

1500 calories seems reasonable, but again, without knowing what you've been eating and in what quantity its going to be difficult to provide guidance.

This!

I will say that I had to up my calories a few times over the past year to break through plateaus. Also, it's not as simple as calories in vs calories out. You have to feed your body properly. Low cal isn't always where it's at.

Losing weight is really hard, and there is so much conflicting information out there!

It sounds like you have a nice exercise routine going, so I'm going to say stick with that for now. When you can, start adding interval training to your cardio on some days you lift, so you can do more lifting and less cardio.

As for eating, this is the tricky bit. If you find tracking it here too hard, try a paper journal. Just a simple notebook would do. Just write down everything that passes through your lips. Don't worry too much about actual calorie counts at first. Just get used to doing it. Then start adding in how many calories you eat each time. MEASURE everything. A simple kitchen scales, measuring cups and spoons for everything. Now you have calories and exact amounts. Once you get used to that, try working on logging here. It can be very frustrating to use this site to log your foods, since most of the database is member generated, nothing is exactly right.
Try just aiming to net your BMR each day in calories. If that's too confusing, just try different numbers around what MFP suggested when you set up your account. You have to experiment to find what works for you!

I was in a similar boat recently when i was frustrated b/c i wasn't losing weight (sometimes even gaining a few lbs) even though i was working out 6 times a week. Someone suggested that perhaps I wasn't eating enough so I took a serious look at my nutrition and realized that i WAS undereating. I thought eating less would make me lose weight but because of the amount of exercise I was doing, my body needed more fuel so that it wouldn't store the fat. I doubled my food intake and in one week, i lost 3 lbs. I agree with previous poster though that it's hard to give advice without knowing exactly what your work out is and exactly what you're eating. I doubled my intake but it was a balance of the right amount of carbs/fat/protein and mostly "clean" food. Nutrition makes a huge difference so take a serious look at what you are eating and all the best!!! you can do it!

Have you had your thyroid tested? There could be a medical reason you're gaining weight. Also, are you eating a lot of carbs? Some people are much more sensitive to carbs than others (me!). I'm supposed to eat 1400 calories a day to lose 1 lb. a week. I have found that even when I stick to this calorie intake I don't lose weight if a lot of my calories are coming from breads, pastas, etc. Alochol could be another reason - how often do you drink? I'm a huge fan of craft beer and my favorites are the super dark high alcohol (read: sugar) beers which are awful for my diet.

As hard as it is (I love carbs and beer!) I try to limit my carb and alcohol intake to Saturdays only. It helps to have one day a week you can splurge so you don't feel totally deprived.

I completely understand your frustrations and encourage you to start looking more specifically at where your calories are coming from instead of just total calorie intake. Also, talk to your doctor - there are often medical reasons women can't lose weight (e.g. thyroid) and can be easily adjusted with hormone therapy etc.

Don't get frustrated, just keep tweaking your system and eventually something will start to work for you!

At the risk of being flamed, but this is my non-sugar-coated opinion: I'd suggest based on your post you are not yet ready for what it takes for long term lifestyle change (which will be accompanied by excess body weight reduction). Don't despair, took me 10 years of being a gym rat to get there mentally.

Nothing anyone types here will make you lose weight. You will have to want to do that, and to put in the hard work. And even then, it will only work when you realize you have to change your life. Tracking your food intake diligently will start you on that path, which is where MFP is a lot of help to a lot of us.

Now for concrete advice: Log EVERYTHING that goes in your mouth on MFP for at least 30 days, add some active friends in the meanwhile, and then ask for advice how you can start making changes to your food intake based on your diary.

You and are pretty much exactly the same stats as me, I am female, 21 years old, and at my heaviest, I was 211 (currently between 205-200) and I am about 5 foot 7. I also work a desk job.

I think you definitely need to start tracking what you are eating, and if you are looking to lost about 1-2 pounds a week then 1500 calories should be a good range, but you also need to take into account your cardio and weight training (so say you ate 1800 calories worth and burned off 300 calories, this would be fine, however do not go under 1200 calories). Also, make sure you are drinking plenty of water, two liters a day is a good amount.

Finally, please do not let the scale dictate how you feel, the number means very little. You should instead go buy a tape measure, and take measurements once a week and keep track of your measurements (you can also weight yourself once a week). The tape measure will give you a more accurate reading, as it is very possible that you are losing fat but also building muscle.

I hope that helps!

I agree with the other posts. It's EXTREMELY important to track what you are eating. As far as your workout regime, it sounds like you are getting your workouts in but how active are you? Do you walk? Do you keep moving on your days off from work? These things make a difference too. I too work in a call center and sit at a desk all day however I walk every day for 1.5 mi during lunch. I also park on the outer skirts of the parking lot to get more steps in my day. Most days of the week I get my 10k steps in. I also walk on weekends and do Zumba for fun. The best advice I can give is make activity a part of your daily life and keep tracking. It's about feeling good and being healthy...The weight loss will come! Keep on it : )

I think the biggest thing is getting the journaling going again. Like Irreeder said, without knowing what you're doing now, how can you know what to change to get to where you want to be? Besides, the act of journaling itself really helps to keep us honest. It's that little extra bit of motivation in knowing that the cheetos or M&M's or whatever else are going to have to be logged, right there on the paper or the screen to be seen in the harsh light of day by your better self.

Another thing to do is find out your resting metabolic rate so you can make an informed choice about whether to cut calories or add them. You can have it measured for about $70 (in my area, at least) and know the exact number, or you can just use a calculator on the internet. Those tend to underestimate your RMR, which in this case is a good thing as you'll be erring on the side of caution.

Once you know your RMR and get an idea of the calories you want to be taking in, you can try to focus on the food instead of the hard and fast calorie number. I find that if I make choices based on the nutrients I need while trying to stay under my calorie limit, deciding on what to eat really takes care of itself. As a guy trying to gain a good bit of muscle while I'm at it, I know that protein is really important to me. So I started looking for foods that packed in the most protein per calorie. And then the most fiber per calorie, and so on and so forth. Just going by the numbers has led me to a lot of really clean and nutrient rich foods that also tend to be a lot more natural.

I got fed up with the way I was looking and feeling a few weeks ago, and I've been fighting hard to change it. I've been trying to keep a journal of what has and hasn't worked and what's gotten in the way. You can read it at davidgetsfit.blogspot.com.

I hope this has been some sort of help. Get back to us and maybe we can help you figure out what your roadblock is. The biggest thing is just to keep at it. There's a way to move forward that just hasn't been found yet.

Wow, there were like a dozen posts in the few minutes it took to write mine. That's awesome. I just joined and I'm glad to see the community is so active.

Oh and as far as 'What calories do I set it at?" I would not set my daily activity level to include dedicated exercise, but only that level you would be at on an average day if you did not exercise. Then let the program set up your goals on their formula. That way you can log any exercise you do and on the days you don't exercise have to figure out if you should make up for it somehow.
Then, just do what they tell you from there... It seems to be working for a lot of people that way.