Weighing yourself every day is not the best thing for some people. You begin to focus on the numbers so much that you go crazy, get stressed out, and end up gaining more weight. A fluctuation between 2-3 pounds in a two week period is completely normal. You should trust that if you are eating healthy, low-calorie, balanced meals, you are going to lose weight and you are improving your overall health.

All that said, you have hit a plateau. Stay strong through this period. When your body kicks back into gear, you will probably see a big number jump off the scale, followed by a couple weeks of smaller numbers.

Weight loss is a marathon, not a race. It is an especially long marathon if you are doing it by diet alone and no exercise. If you aren't exercising, consider doing so.

first, congrats on quitting smoking, that's a HUGE victory!!

It's really hard to try to say how many calories someone should eat - I mean, with the amount of exercise, I'd think you'd be losing where you are. But basically, there are only 3 choices - stay the same and give it more time and see what happens, go down further (say 1300-1500) or try increasing to 1800-2000 and see what happens. I personally am a bit skeptical of the "eat more to lose more" concept, but the bottom line is that everyone's body works differently, so you don't know what will happen until you try and just because it doesn't work for me doesn't mean it wouldn't work for you, esp. with that level of activity.

(and I'm not sure I'm wise, although I appreciate the compliment! I've just been around for a long time and have been overweight since I was a kid so I've got almost 40 years on and off of diet experience. I have managed to lose a fair amount of weight over the years and picked up some good tips along the way, even iif I never did a good job of maintaining - so that's the best tip of all, I know that with the support on 3fc, we will get to goal and even more importantly, will maintain when we do!)

1-2 pounds weight loss a week is the ideal. You're heavier so you'll lose in the beginning pretty quickly, then your body gets used to the idea and decides it wants to hang on to what's left (my opinion, nothing professional) because hey, you never know when there might be a famine and you'll need all that extra weight. But you know in your brain that we don't have those types of famines any more, around here anyway.

This is what happend to me when I stopped losing weight-I'm not saying this is what you do but just from personal experience.

It's so easy to get complacent about little licks and tastes. It's easy to forget them when recording your calories.

It's easy to undersetimate what you are eating. 1 cup of cereal may have been measured for so long that you think you can tell 1 cup in your bowl and not bother. But amounts will creap up.

It's also easy to overestimate how much you are burning through exercise and ADL (activities of daily living)

Weighing yourself daily can be discouraging now that the weight loss has slowed down. Maybe weigh once a week or 2 x month.

Take your measurements and check them weekly also. Sometimes when you don't lose weight, you'll still lose inches and that's a happy day too. Meausre just about every part of your body that you can get a tape measure around. You'll be surprised where the inches can fall off from.


But what ever is going on right now, you have lost quite a bit. Don't do what I did and give up and go back to eating poorly because "nothing I do matters anyway"

I lost about 45 pounds 5 years ago and couldn't get the last 20-months went by where I tried juggling what I ate and how much I exercised and nothing...
So I sort of slowly gave up and gave into the occasional treat and little too often and then the once in while going out to eat became a much more frequent event and in about 4-5 years I slowly put most of the weight back on.

So stand firm, you are on the right track and you will eventually figure it out. Keep remembering the kids and how they deserve a healthy mom and how you will be so much more energetic to run around with them.

Sarah in MD

I Just skimmed over the other responses, but I definitely agree with water. Drink as much as you can without drowning lol.

Otherwise what you're eating and the calories look fine, I suggest looking at your sodium intake. Too much salt/lots of sodium will stall your weight loss.

For me, weighing everyday drives me crazy. My goal is once a week, but I've been checking every 3 days or so.

Just a quick comment about water... I think it is important to remain hydrated, but water isn't the only way. We get hydration from lots of our foods and from everything we drink (even caffeinated beverages, according to the research).

And while it is important to stay hydrated, that doesn't mean you necessarily need to drink a lot to lose weight. Many of us (including myself) lost without paying much attention to water intake. Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't, just that you might not need too.

Finally, it is possible to drink too much water... so be careful!