Discouraged

I can't lose weight.

'm a 36yo female. I've been following FB on and off for several years; as of this writing, I'm at 6+ months of 5x/week of FB workouts. Additionally, I get a 40-minute medium cardio workout daily when I hike my dog. I push myself hard in the workouts, and I definitely see an improvement in my strength and endurance...

...but I am still obese. My doctor can't figure it out. I've also visited a nutritionist and fitness instructor. They're baffled. My thyroid is fine. I've been researching weight loss and nutrition for years (not as a professional, just as an individual who is extremely motivated) and I can't figure it out, either.

I can stick to diets. That's not the problem. After so many years of carrying around extra weight -- after four years since I've even been on a date -- you can believe that I have the motivation to stick to a diet.

I've done calorie tracking (at various levels of carlories) and macronutrient tracking, down to the point of weighing EVERYTHING on a scale before eating it. I've done generally healthy diets, like the kind Kelli and Daniel recommend, and I've done fad diets that I intellectually recognize as being unhealthy, reasoning that I would switch to a healthy diet after I lost the weight... but I never lose the weight.

I've tried elimination diets, in the hopes that an unsuspected food allergy was the culprit, but I've never identified anything.

Short of going on 600 calorie/day diet, I don't know what to do--and that is the one diet that I just don't think I have the willpower for. Aside from being ~incredibly~ unhealthy, starvation is just demoralizing to even think about.

I'm not sure what I'm hoping to get by posting this. I suppose advice would be nice, but it would have to be pretty extraordinary to to be something I haven't already tried. It's so frustrating to see other people posting their before/after pictures here. I'm happy for them, but discouraged for myself. For years I have been putting so much effort into sensible eating and exercising, and I just keep getting fatter.