I have been at a stall for 5 weeks now and I am just frustrated. At the start I was eating about 1300 calories a day without exercise. I lost 5 pounds very quickly. Then a few weeks later I started working out for about 30-40 min 4 days a week (Kinect EA Sports Active). So I moved my calories to 1500. I have been hovering in between 157-158 for 5 weeks now. Any advice?
A typical day in food:
Special K cereal and skim milk: 150
banana or apple: 100-120
whole wheat wrap with chicken, blue cheese, pecans, lettuce, half apple: 450
fat free blueberry yogurt 90
go jack cheese: 80
variety of dinner (cooked at home, rarely eat out or processed food) but I weigh and measure it out to stay under calories, typically a 400-450 calorie dinner
snack skinny cow cone or ice cream sandwhich: 150
water intake is good, I force myself to drink at least 32 oz of water by lunch then another 32 oz before i go home from work. On my workout days I drink even more water during exercise. Oh and I do measure myself and I have gone down only 1/2 inch around my hips.
That's a lot of sugar. Special K is high in sugar, despite it's marketing as a "diet" cereal, the fat free yogurt probably has sugar, the skinny cow = sugar.
Try switching to whole grains for breakfast, maybe replace the fat free yogurt with some almond butter and a pear. Maybe up your protein?
Hmm, do you do any weight lifting? That might help move things along.
Unless dinner is all veggies you aren't getting any. And while i love love love dairy (and am trying to up my intake) your typical day is very high in dairy.
I know we say "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" and to some degree that is true but micro and macro nutrients really matter, especially as you get lower in weight and closer to goal.
Your water intake is ok, you could definately benifit from more. Just for reference, I know a lot of people, myself included, shoot for 100oz/day. You are lacking veggies for sure and you are high in sugar, maybe your body doesn't like that.
Additionally, you are very close and maybe already within the healthy BMI range so losing weight is going to be harder for you. Not totally knowing your exercise routine it's hard to say if lowering or increasing your cals is the right answer, but I'm going to venture to guess, and I rarely recommend this, but you may need to lower you cals. If you don't want to do that, then I'd certainly increase the exercise.