No advice, just sympathy. I haven’t added to my exercise routine, so at best I can only speculate why and what would turn that around.
My exercise does to allow me some caloric breathing room, but it’s rarely worth more than 100-200 calories and never as high as yours.
Cat Whisperer what exercise are you doing? I’m wondering whether you may be overestimating the number of calories burned. If you’re using the estimators that come with the online calorie trackers, I’ve found them pretty inaccurate. I eat about 700-800 extra calories on days I work out twice - 1 hour of martial arts, 1 hour of weight lifting and 50 minutes of brisk walking. The program I use to track diet/exercise suggested that I needed 1200+ extra calories, and there is no way I burned that much.
I overshot my goal a little - 52.42kg. I still feel like the dietitian was being conservative when she said that 16% bodyfat would be 53kg. I have just under 2 weeks before my next appointment, and would like to be around 50kg. I think I’d feel “done” then. I’ve definitely seen a difference in my thighs this last week, and I think they’ll look even better if I can drop another couple of kilos. If my lifts (or periods!) start to suffer I’ll put the weight back on, but I reckon I’ll be alright. I’m paying special attention to my joints because a friend of mine who pushed her bodyfat too low said that they were the first part of her body to feel not quite right.
I wore my old gym pants today; they used to be form-fitting and now they’re baggy! Actually all my clothes are looser now - the only clothes I can wear were a bit tight at my former weight, or are supposed to be worn loose. I’m giddy at the thought of buying a new wardrobe. I’ve already replaced all my underwear, and that was so much fun. I have all this incredibly comfortable yet swoonworthy lingerie, and everything matches!
On the topic of plateaus, I weigh about 3 pounds less now than I did in January. Yeah, that’s right, 3 pounds of weight loss, more or less, in about five months.
However, I have also seriously increased my running volume during that time, going from 3-5 miles per week to approximately 20 miles per week now. So I think that I’ve definitely gained some lean muscle mass. My clothes fit great and I feel about as fit and toned as I ever have. So I’m very happy with myself right now even though my weight loss has slowed/stalled. I figure it will pick back up again once my body has adjusted to the increased exercise and muscle mass.
Good compliment report: Someone at my kids’ preschool the other day told me that I look “half the size you used to!” 
Don’t let the scale determine your happiness. There are many other benefits of working out, eating well, and taking care of yourself. Can you do more? Do your clothes fit better? Have you had your cholesterol checked? Do you look better? All of these things are indications that you’re making progress. The scale is just a single data point.
So, as long as I stay in those boundaries and a pound is 3500 calories, I should burn a minimum of a pound a week. Then again, I did some looking around and it does look like the recommended minimum should be 1800 calories. I have been losing weight but I have also been gaining muscle too (my arms, legs, and chest measurements have gotten bigger while my double chin and stomach have gotten smaller).
I’d be a bit worried, but everybody’s body is different and since I haven’t been losing muscle I feel like I’m still good for now.
Tonight’s dinner, we’re making those Jennie-O lettuce wraps. (But substituting chicken breast for ground turkey). They are so good and even the kids loved 'em.
You know, you’re all right. My clothes do fit better, I can march up a hill with hardly breathing heavy at all, I eat mostly healthy foods - I just have to remind myself that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Patience has never been my strong suit; I expect a one-to-one correlation between effort and results, and I’m learning that weight loss really doesn’t work that way.
At my weigh in yesterday I was up .6 lbs, but I expected that since I was down 5 lbs the previous week and weighed in while dehydrated. I was a bit bummed, but then remembered that I’m still 44 lbs lighter than I was 4 months ago and got over it.
In theory anyway. I think we all know bodies don’t exactly work in a way that makes sense sometimes.
Oh, I’m learning that. 
Last week: 206.71
Today: 205.00
Change: -1.71
My actual weight for the last few mornings has been 203.
My goals are…
Goal 1: 199 by May 1
Goal 2: 190 by July 4
Goal 3: 175 by 2011
So obviously, I’m not quite going to make Goal 1. But that’s ok, I am making good progress and I am happy with everything so far. It was a tough goal and I didn’t miss it by that much anyway. It’s full steam ahead for 190 by the Fourth of July. And as a bonus, there are a few milestones before that such as being able to start my weight with the number “1”, and moving out of the “Obese” category into the “Overweight” BMI category.
Here is a chart of my weight since I started that I think is pretty nifty. One thing that jumps out at me is that during that big plateau in the middle, you can see that some of the data points are little circles instead of little diamonds. That means that I didn’t record a value for that day an the system had to extrapolate the data. It seems that when I am doing a more diligent job of recording the data, I am doing a better job at loosing weight as well. Just an observation.
I was at a store yesterday picking up some shirts and the XL, which I’ve worn pretty much my entire adult life, weren’t fitting well. I tried on some L shirts and they fit just fine. That felt good.
