I Think I've Got It!
I think I finally figured out how to balance my exercise and calorie intake for the day. 
I hope I did anyway. After going though a few things, I decided that I was starving my body.
A little history: On May 30th I started, full steam ahead, doing exercise. I had not exercised in, well ever... That is only a slight overstatement. Well, I was cutting calories doing to 1200 a day and I was doing enough exercise to burn off more than that. You would think that would be a good thing, but I started to notice something. I all of a sudden stopped losing weight and I was hungry all the time. I hadn't been hungry for about a week, but now it was very difficult to keep my calories down and still get the hunger pains to go away. I thought I was over doing it. So, I stopped my exercise.
Two days later, I lost another pound. My loss continued to drop 1 lb every couple of days. I then started my exercise again. This led to a repeat of the other story.
What I am doing now: So, this time, instead of stopping my exercise completely, I did some research. I gathered a lot of information and decided that I was probably right... I WAS starving myself. I realized that my body needs a lot of calories just to survive at a relatively sedentary state. I was already cutting those calories by more than half and I was adding enough activity to more than burn off what I was taking in. This meant that my body was NOT getting any calories to survive with. I did finish my week and decided I would change things on my next weigh in day. That day happens to be Monday. On Monday I reduced my exercise by half and added 300 calories to my day for a total of 1500 per day. This meant that I was actually giving my body calories to run on.
The result: Well, I have been doing my new routine for 1 week and have started losing weight again. I dropped 4 lbs this week. I have also noticed that I almost need to push myself to get all of my calories in everyday. I am just not as hungry. Its even easier to cut back so that I can have a treat sometimes. I hope this means that I have it figured out. I will take another look at it next Monday and hopefully the results will be similar.
I am very happy today. This gives me a lot of motivation. You can't help being in a good mood when you figure something out that actually works for you and gets you closer to where you want to be.
I hope that the rest of you have had a great weekend and are having a terrific week. Take care, keep up the good work, and be proud of yourselves. We CAN do this! We WILL make it this time! We DO deserve it!
