met my goals but no loss!!

Why were you so far under your net calories? You're supposed to NET 1500 calories, not just eat them.

Your body went into starvation mode. Eat your daily cals and get some mild exercise until you feel better. Then keep eating and increase your execising. The pounds will fall off a lot in the beginning...Then you should start seeing the 1-2 weekly loss...

Even if you knew EXACTLY what your TDEE was (which you can't, you only have estimates, this is worsened if you exercise since judging calorie burn for exercise is difficult and notoriously off)
Even if you knew EXACTLY what your calorie intake was (which you can't, you only have estimates, and again people are generally extremely bad at accurately estimating calorie intake)


You still wouldn't see linear weight loss. It doesn't work like that. Keep at it for a couple months and then gauge your progress.

I would agree with the consensus that you are not eating enough calories. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true. There is a fine line between starvation mode (body calorie-hoardes) and weight loss mode.

Be kind & patient with yourself. Try giving yourself a few more high-quality calories (starch-free veggies, for example) this week and see if that gets things moving!

Hang in there!

oops i think i've been going about this the wrong way!! so if i have a daily goal of 1500 that doesn't mean i just have to stay within 1500 calories to meet that goal?? i'm confused now!

It means you should be eating 1500 calories a day... and if you exercise, you should be eating those calories back to (assuming you are sedentary in your profile). And as I said, if you are that close to your goal, I think you should reevaluate your daily consumption

oops i think i've been going about this the wrong way!! so if i have a daily goal of 1500 that doesn't mean i just have to stay within 1500 calories to meet that goal?? i'm confused now!

nothing to be confused about .." eat some to all" your workout calories
MFP tells you in big bold numbers how many calories you have left on your main page

Thanks for the advice everybody on average i burn around 500 calories a day from walking? if I have a goal of 1500 a day should i be eating 2000 calories to get my 1500 target??

If so i've been missing out on a lot of eating!!!

The basic idea behind this has to do with how you are coming up with your daily calorie targets. If you use MFP, it calculates your target intake if you did no exercise whatsoever. Other calculations actually take exercise into account. That's why, with MFP, you are supposed to eat your exercise calories back (ie on mfp your daily might be 1500, and then you eat the calories you burn from exercise, another program might not have you eat your exercise calories back, but set your daily target to 2000).

The thing to keep in mind is, as I mentioned previously, people are notoriously bad at estimating calorie intake and calorie expenditure from exercise. For this reason, some people will eat 50% of their exercise calories back or something like that. Test the waters (you need to keep at it for more than a week to truly gauge progress)

The primary point is to eat enough to fuel your body properly. This prevents health complications, and at least for me keeps me from going postal at work.

You'll see a lot of folks saying that if you don't eat enough you can gain weight. That's not the entire story. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight no matter what (bear in mind things like water weight, when your last bowel movement was, etc can foggy up the actual results which is why weight loss isn't linear). The problem is that your body adapts to your calorie intake, and your metabolism slows if you restrict your calories enough. This metabolic slowdown would reduce the number of calories you burn throughout the day, and would obviously reduce the number of calories you would be able to eat and still maintain the original deficit, so to a point excessive restriction is a vicious cycle.

Hope that helps.

The pedometer question first:
Unfortunately it depends. I personally think that the bit in MFP where you say if you're sedentary, lightly active, etc accounts for the usual walking around calories that you burn throughout the day. Strictly speaking that's not the case, and yes you can eat back those calories, however I have found that since I underestimate my calorie intake a lot that sort of thing 'balances it out'. At the end of the day a lot of it has to do with finding what works for you. Unfortunately that means time (i.e. try it, do it for a few weeks, and track your progress...if you aren't getting the results you expect after that much time, make some slight changes, and try again).

As for 'saving' calories:
Most certainly, a lot of people do this, including myself. It's the basic premise behind 'cheat days' or refeed days or whatever you want to call it. I would suggest being careful about taking that to an extreme (ie not eating for 6 days and then eating until your stomach ruptures on the 7th) but other than that there is no problem with banking calories for the weekend.

As I said originally, you want to make sure that, over time, you are feeding your body enough for it to function optimally.

I good rule of thumb for speed of weight loss is:
75 lbs or more: Choose to lose 2lbs/week
40-75 pounds: Choose to lose 1.5lbs/week
25-40 pounds: Choose to lose 1lb/week
15-20 pounds: Choose either 0.5lb - 1lb / week
Less than 15-20 pounds: Choose 0.5lb/week

If you try significantly higher deficits, you could run into problems.