Since Jan. I have been focusing on my weight loss and fitness. I have lost 3 pounds. I have lost 13 inches so the fitness part is working . I am wondering why I am not seeing the scale drop. I am on a 1260 calorie diet; I make sure to get in 2 dairy, 5 veggies, and at least 2 servings of protein (not necessarily animal base). I have been working out 6-7 days a week with my gym's body challenge. We are doing weights, cardio, and interval training to name a few. One of the days is just walking on the tread mill and I try not to have a full blown workout on that day. I have been battling with this issue off and on for about a year. I am 43 and only have about 10 pounds to lose. What am I doing wrong that is preventing me from losing the weight. I also use my fitness pal on my iphone to count my calories and workouts. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Are you keeping a daily food diary? This is really important. It is so easy to forget what you ate and go over your calories. Weighing food, and making sure you have the right portion size too. And I read somewhere that some people, when they exercise, actually keep weight on, or gain it. I am one of these people, so I concentrate firstly on my diet, stick to my points, and do light exercise like walking (when I do exercise).

You might need to increase your calories a bit. 1260 doesn't sound like enough for a moderately active adult woman, IMHO.

You can also try cycling your starchy veggies and grains – eat them only on weight days and eat only lean protein and veggies and some fruit on cardio days.

Also, keep in mind that you are building muscle. muscle weighs more than fat. Your weight may not have gone down a lot, but as long as you are losing inches, I'd count that as progress.

I know we like to see that number on the scale going down, but it's also good to remind ourselves that pant sizes are measured in inches, not pounds
When you are exercising, you can be WAY smaller than when you started and weight about the same!

If you are losing inches weight is just a number. You are going through a body recomposition which means you are replacing you 'fat weight' with 'muscle weight'
No i dont mean turning fat into muscle, I am just saying as you are dropping fat, due to your activities (resistance training and interval training) which are often a prerequisite to adding muscle mass/density. Don't be dis heartened with the scale numbers focus on the inches, eventually the scale will follow

thank you everyone for your response. I do keep a tight reign on my calories and portion size. I did add more calories and have see a slight drop in my weight. small steps but i am able to do things i have not been able to do before. Again thanks for the advice and support.

I'm no expert in this department but I wanted to drop a note to say stick with it. If you are seeing a difference in your clothing fit, what ever you are doing is working. I know it's super hard but try not to focus on the scale as long as you are happy with the results otherwise.

You may also want to watch how much sugar you are taking in. I have found that even "healthy" foods are very high in sugar but low in fat. I am finding that by keeping track of my sugar only, the calories are low and my weight is going down. Not to mention, it is much easier to keep track of sugar than calories LOL. I try to keep sugar down to 15 grams a day. The only problem is that I love fruit and it is really high in sugar. I just limit my fruits to once or twice a week if that. Instead I stick to lots and lots of veggies. Some are sweet enough to trick my mind into thinking I am having something sweet but it is lower in sugar.
I do know that since I bought a treadmill and doing the weight loss training programs on it, my weight loss is a little slower but yet my inches are going down.

I feel the same way...watching my calories and working out 5 days a week, but still losing nothing. I have lost an inch in my waist, but I don't see how it's muscle weighing more than fat because I don't lift weights. I only use the treadmill. I hate weight lifting period.

If you are working out that much and only eating 1260 cal per day, you are not eating enough. I too use MyFitnessPal to log my food and exercise,a nd it tells me how many calories to eat each day. Minimum you should be eating is 1200 plus the number of calories you burn in your exercise. Try MFP again.

Three pounds in three months, when you've lost 13 inches and only have 10 lbs to lose, isn't poor weight loss at all. I think the only thing "wrong" may be your expectations.

How are you determining that you're 10 pounds "overweight?" BMI assumes an average amount of muscle (which unfortunately, isn't much). If you're very active and have gained more muscle, your healthy weight is going to be higher than if you didn't.

Maybe you aren't losing much, because you don't need to lose any more.

Another possibility is that you're body just won't lose more quickly. There may be nothing wrong with you - nothing wrong with what you're doing - and nothing wrong with losing one pound per month - and maybe nothing wrong with not losing any more.

About five years ago (I'm going to be 46 this month), I was losing just under one pound per month (with more than 250 lbs left to lose), and I complained to my doctor that I was failing, and "should be losing at least 2 lbs a week, like a normal person," and my doctor scolded me for believing such nonsense. He reminded me that "normal" is losing nothing. Normal is gaining or losing for a little while, getting frustrated and giving up and then gaining. One pound a month (even at almost 400 lbs) was extraordinary progress because most people (of any size) don't do it.

I took that advice to heart, and just kept going. Doing the best I could, and accepting whatever results I got. I decided that "just not gaining" was going to be my most important goal, and that while I was at it, I'd try to lose "just one more" pound.

I'm only NOW starting to experience an average of more than 1 lb per month (it's now about 1.5 lbs per month).

I couldn't exercise much at all when I started, and my diabetes and other health issues were much worse. So, I did have factors that contributed to slow weight loss, but slow weight loss is much more normal than we realize. We don't realize it, because we don't see it. People who lose slowly either give up in frustration or they don't admit that they're losing slowly because they don't want anyone to think they're not trying hard enough.

Often we view weight loss as if we were running a huge marathon and because we see 5,000 people ahead of us, we think we're in last place, not realizing there are 20,000 people behind us (all thinking they're in last place and envying those of us who are losing faster than they are).

Last year, I lost 11.5 lbs in my TOPS group (taking off pounds sensibly) and it won me third place in our chapter for weight loss. First place went to a man who lost 30-some pounds (maybe because he worked harder, or maybe because men often lose faster than women). The woman who came in second lost 12 lbs and she has 100 lbs more than I do to lose.

Our chapter has about 30 members now, and we're not a bunch of slackers. Our results are fairly typical of all TOPS chapters. Recent research compaired the results of Weight Watchers, TOPS, OA and other weight loss meeting groups and found that all weight loss meeting groups had similar results AND tended to be more successful than folks doing weight loss without a support group.

That means that one pound per month is good weight loss, not poor. We've been taught to think that AMAZING weight loss is average, that good weight loss is sub par, and that average weight loss is complete and utter FAILURE.

I've lost 105 lbs at an average of one pound per month. Slow weight loss isn't failure (or if it is, I've failed off 105 lbs).

You can't go by BMI if you're exercising more than average (and you are), so I'd recommend that you consider having a body fat analysis done, or at least speak to your doctor about how much you really need to lose or can lose safely. It's possible that you don't have 10 lbs left to lose, and that any weight loss would likely be muscle loss. It's also equally possible that you can lose a little more, but that one pound per month is normal and healthy weight loss for you.

Ditch the scale and go by how your clothes feel! I don't think my loss has been phenomenal at all, inches not really lost, but I can bend over more comfortably now and my clothes feel looser.

You should increase your calories to 1500 cal/day and work out every other day to give your muscles time to rest in between workouts. I also agree that you should ditch the scale and go by how your clothes are fitting.