I have gained 40lbs in the past year due to things I could clearly see I was doing wrong. Early November I kept a week long log of all my eating. I determined the food I ate was pretty healthy, I just ate too much and too late at night. I did not exercise much was my other problem.
Since November 15 I have been eating less, I have cut out all late night snacking, I have tripled my exercise, but I have not managed to lose any weight. When I check my bmi it says I am in the category obese.
I don't know what else to do, and I can't take much more. I am wearing myself out working so hard at losing weight, I don't understand why I still have it.

What am I doing wrong???????

I feel your pain. maybe you are improving/shrinking but the scale isn't showing it? how do your clothes feel?

Are you keeping track of your calories? I put your information (guessed your age, I said 25) into an RMR calculator and a conservative estimate for your resting metabolism is 2153. This is using the "sedentary" activity factor.

You could easily lose 1 pound a week eating 1600 calories.

It is possible that while you are eating healthy and have cut down on the late night snacks that you are still going over your calories.

An excellent resource to track calories is fitday.com (there are others such as the "dailyplate" and "sparkpeople".

You can do it! I know gaining back weight is a horrible feeling. Almost everyone that seems to lose weight and keep it off has lost weight before and gained some back. It is a learning experience.

Please keep posting and take it one day and one mini-goal at a time.

I never lose weight when I'm exercising heavily. It took joining WW and really getting a handle on eating less (and better) to finally get the weight to come off. I spent last summer hiking, biking, walking, swimming, burning up to 5000 a week (or a day if I was hiking) and not a pound came off.

Now I'm doing WW, exercising moderately and the weight is coming off. In spring when I can bike and hike again, my body will be used to losing weight and it won't hamper my progress, or it will start really building the underlying muscle.

I'd recommend getting really clear about your eating either by tracking calories through something like Sparkpeople or joining a program like Weight Watchers, which I am loving!!

I have done the same thing!! I would work out like crazy and eat really healthy food, but I would overeat the healthy food and wouldn't lose weight.

Checking your calories does help, but I don't do it on a daily basis -- I pretty much eat the same thing every day so I have a good idea how many calories I am taking in at all my meals.

Exercise is weird with weight loss sometimes...for the past 3 months I have worked out four days a week for 60 minutes doing cardio and didn't lose anything, and this week (since I am on Christmas break from work) I haven't worked out...and I lost 5 pounds. ?!?!?!?!

Just keep your head up and monitor your eating more than anything. You can do it!!

I have learned that exercise and healthy eating sometimes only gets me so far. Yesterday, for example, I ate only whole healthy foods all day. I had fruit and coffee for breakfast. A huge salad with black beans and mango salsa for lunch and homemade shrimp stir fry for dinner. I measured and only used 1 tbs of soy sauce and hoisin sauce and 1 tbs of smart balance light. oh and the stir fry was huge and loaded with veggies. Well dinner turned out being over 700 calories! I ended up eating just shy of 1600 calories in spite of no processed junk and tons of veggies. now if i had eaten a serving of the shrimp stir fry it would have been about 250 calories. but instead I ate half the huge pan! If I hadnt counted calories i would have thought yesterday was a great 2 lb a week kinda loss day. But if everyday were 1600 calories my body only loses about 1 pound a week, if I'm hitting the gym like I should. Without calorie counting I would have said that was a stellar day. Not just a good day. I dont want to think about the days I feel I ate well and thought "oh I could eat a heavy meal" and still expect to lose.

It's very frustrating. i completely agree. It's turning your life around to what you're not used to. No one in my family eats healthy and of course I picked up those habits too. Now in order for me to lose weight I have to let go of old habits and that's very hard. I may even compare it to giving up cigarettes. I get frustrated with myself at tims like yesterday. We all will at some point. But you have to remember, if you do not love yourself you will not be able to have the body you want. You have to get healthy because you love yourself. You have to forgive yourself at times when you should had picked up an apple and not a brownie. It's all about self-discpline. How much are you going to let yourself get away with this knowing the physical and emotional consequences? Take it a small step at a time. If you bite off too much you are more likely to lead to more disappointments because you are expecting too much from yourself. Everyone has their own pace. Find yours and that's the key to this!

Thanks for the tip, just signed up, hope it helps me!

I discovered that exercise for me is not a way to lose weight.

I need to be eating less calories in order to lose weight. Exercise is good to maintain my cardiovascular health, to take stress off, to be proficient at some sport, for fun, anything else BUT weight loss.

Keep track of the food you're eating and through trial and error you'll figure out what works. I like fitday the best, because it's the most simple and easy to navigate, imo.

Good luck.

I'm with Rana on exercise, it is separate from my eating and I can't lose weight through exercise, but it has a boatload of other benefits. Matt sent you to the right place - log a few day's worth of calories and see where you fall. 1600-1800 a day is a good starting place for a pound a week loss, and then after a few weeks you can adjust your calories up or down to a place where you are comfortable and losing weight, both.

It doesn't have to be hard or miserable, it just takes daily dedication and good choices, over and over and over again. Small steps add up to big losses!