I've been trying to lose weight for the past 2 weeks with absolutely no change whatsoever either up or down. I have been writing it all down ever since I started and yesterday I decided to enter it into fitday.com. According to that I'm eating on average about 1300 calories and working off over 3000 calories per day (but what I've eaten has gone between 950 one day and almost 2000 on another). I have had it suggested to me that I should aim to eat around 1500 calories per day but I'm kind of worried about going the opposite way and eating too much instead.

So am I not losing anything because I havent had enough?

Oh and I know I havent been drinking nearly enough water too

Can you post your fitday so we can have a look at it? Also, on your activity level, set it to sedentiary or bed bound, as this will help give a better perspective. Under activities, don't forget to enter sleep hours, or fitday will assume you are on the go 24/7 .

2 weeks isn't very long to judge weight loss so I wouldn't worry just yet, it takes some people longer than others to lose.

Well, first of all, you need to regulate what you are eating a little bit more. A lot of calorie counters don't eat the same calories every day, but they do stay in a "range". What may be happening with you, is that you are not eating enough on one particular day (900 calories) and you are starving and overcompensating for it the next-your 2000 calorie days.

Losing weight is about calories in vs. calories out, but it is also about health-nutrition and exercise. Your body is the machine, and your food is its fuel-and you are running on near empty some days, and having more than you want to be (to lose weight) the next.

Start with a "range" to stay in. I would try a range of 1300-1600 calories and try that for a few weeks and see what happens. If you eat 1350 one day, and 1500 the next-that is great. You are in your target range.

Try to make healthy choices in those calories as well-that makes a big difference as well in how you look and feel. Lean protein, veggies, fruits, skim dairy, and whole grains.

Also-I am very leery of the calculators that tell you how many calories you are burning off each day, and the calorie things on treadmills and other fitness machines. They aren't all that accurate. Are you sure that you are burning 3000 calories per day? That is a pretty active number-considering walking a mile at 3mph/in 20 minutes burns about 150.

I am with Aphil on this one. I think all of her suggestions have been right on and just thought they could use a 2nd read. These questions come up a lot and we'd all benefit to look again at some good answers.

Thanks for these replies, I thought I had already answered but it mustn't have worked.

I think I must have done something wrong on the fitday thing, you're right that I couldn't really have worked off all those calories so I think I'll just give up on that. I have no idea how to post up what I've put on it though.

I do know that I eat way too much bread but other than that I'm eating pretty healthily, so I'm just going to stick with having what I feel is healthy rather than trying to count the calories since I'm useless at it.

I have finally lost a kilo though yay!

This post helped me a lot. Like the threadmaker I thought I was burning more calories because of fitday too. They really should assume that you sleep every night... I didn't even think to add 'sleep' as one of my activities.

You definitely have to work with any online calculator that you use. I've tweaked mine for years so that it reflects what has really happened.