MInimal Weight Loss

Yes. If you aren't losing you need to eat less. If you locked these people in a room and gave them less food, they would absolutely lose. But as long as they are feeding themselves and self reporting, it won't happen.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454084

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12396160/

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701

http://www.acaloriecounter.com/blog/why-am-i-not-losing-weig ht

  Nothing like a handful of scientific studies to prove a point!  Losing weight is really that simple!  To have a person eat MORE calories to lose weight is ridiculous.

If you want to start losing, you have to measure and weigh EVERY, SINGLE, THING, you put in your mouth, record it (honestly), watch for results, and if the results are weight loss, then rinse and repeat.  If they are not weight loss, then the calories MUST go LOWER!!!!

Two slices of bread and a tablespoon of peanut butter. Not many of us would consider that a lot of food. Heck, kids in kindergarten eat more than that for lunch.

But add the calories from two slices of bread and one tablespoon of peanut butter -- about 300 calories a day, 110,000 calories per year -- that's a gain of 31 pounds in a year. 31 pounds from a little toddler's meal.

It takes very, very little extra food. And, while almost all of us have the math skills to count two slices of bread, I'd bet money that the one tablespoon of peanut butter, if you put it on a scale, is closer to two than one.

Whenever I see someone log three ounces of something, I know they're just guessing. You'll never serve exactly 3 ounces of anything. It's like going to the grocery store, getting a cart full of food, and have the total hit exactly $100.00. It doesn't happen. For lunch today, I had 3.85 ounces of deli ham and 1.55 ounces of American cheese. Accuracy matters.

People can estimate if they want to. Some people can do it that way just fine. But if you can't lose, or are gaining, for god's sake, go to Walmart, get a 12 dollar kitchen scale, and start making an accurate eating log. It adds about ten seconds to meal prep.

I get that it's a real pain in the ass to measure and weigh everything.  I get that we want to have a normal life and just eat what we want to, like a thin person does.  But the fact is, obese people are NOT like thin people.  We have proven that eyeballing our portions and "eating like a normal person" does not work for us.  If we knew how to do that, we would never have allowed ourselves to become obese.  We have issues where food is concerned.  The only way out of the chains that tie us to obesity is to be BRUTALLY HONEST about how much, and what we eat.  The only way to do that is to weigh and measure EVERYTHING we eat and record it so we can SEE just how much we are consuming.  You can't change what you refuse to acknowledge.  

You know, you just made something make sense to me (and since the OP has left, I don't feel bad about highjacking this thread). I've always been really good at "eyeballing" portion sizes -- I still weigh and measure everything, but I like to guess weights and see how close I can get (and if I'm off, I'm almost always under). Since surgery, I've needed more calories than what a lot of people report to feel satiated, but I'm still losing at a respectable clip for where I'm at. I wonder if it's not that I'm eating more so much as I'm more accurately reporting my intake than people in my IRL support group who claim to eat 30% fewer calories but have stopped losing. Hmm...

I hope you will post your daily menu in detail.  Vets here who have reached goal and are successful in maintaining their loss for years are a good source of information...they may be able to give you some suggestions that will help you start losing again.  Most plans call for goals not only for calories, but also carbs and protein -- Calories under 800, carbs under 40, and at least 60 grams of protein.  Plus, at the very least, at least 64 oz. of water.  It's the combination that works.  Protein first, the low-carb veggies.  No pasta/rice/bread until maintenance.

IMHO, better to reach out to vets, than to hook up with people with minimal loss.  

Hope you can get things moving again.

Mary

(BTW, I, myself, stopped losing for several months, and have just started losing again.  Trouble started when I added low-carb pita bread into my menu.  I stayed within my "numbers" at first, but then started going over.  I did not gain any weight, but I did not lose any weight either, and I have about 75 pounds to lose before reaching goal.  What happened:  I cut out all bread/pasta/potatoes -- and the pounds are dropping again.  What you eat does make a difference....I never want to "wake the carb monster" again!)

As a person who has lost nearly 200 pounds --- I can tell you that I STOP LOSING AT EXACTLY 951 calories a day.  I have tested it several times.  1100 would DEFINITELY be maintenance for me.  Why are you so resistant in eating less and seeing if that might work for you, too?

600-800 calories per day with 80g of protein and no more than 30-50 grams of carbs (and only green veggies with fruit twice a week) seem to be the magic for me.  The nutritionists give crappy advice.  At my 6 month, she said she wanted me to eat fruit 2x per day (because she never put the carb constraint on me).  I learned early from following the vets' advice that this wouldn't work for me at all.  So I would try cutting your calories AND making sure that you eat only the right kind of carbs.  You can't lose anything by trying this... except weight!

Communicating effectively on the internet is difficult 

My desire to reach out to others experience the same difficulties I am experiencing has resulted in some harsh replies. Is that what you would want if you were in my shoes? If YOU were that rare case the surgeon warns about at the info seminars and you came here looking for others & people replied  - if you are compliant its impossible not to lose, I bet your wrong, why are you resistant, dont do what you doctor says. 

I will take your comments to heart  & get a few days logged so that I can share an accurate picture of my protein, calorie, carbs sources. I will have to weigh your recommendations against what my health care providers. Who do I listen to -  "the internet"? or the doctors who know me? 

btw - I might not have had a weight change since *Recently* changing form 950 to 1100, I can stay awake all day now.

I'm sorry you think comments were harsh. But our bodies aren't magic. If you eat less, you will lose. You aren't immune. But you have to KNOW you are eating less, not just think you are. We spent years, decades maybe, of thinking we weren't eating nearly as much as we were. No one gets to a BMI of 55 without eating way too much food, for way too long.

Logging for a few days won't tell you much. You'd need at least a month to give you an accurate picture, and for your body to make its initial adjustments and actually show up on the scale. Stick with this, and you can absolutely have positive results. I wish you good luck.