Why Has Failure Become Such a Reasonable Option?

I'm not sure precisely why, but I am absolutely failing at the goal of getting to 20% body fat or 200 pounds. My weight has been stagnant (along with my body fat) since July 1st or so.

First let's get the data in so it can be understood:


Date / Weight / BF-Tanita / BF Calipers / (diff between tan-calipers)

08.21.2005 / 221.2 / 20.1% / 22.33% / 2.2%
07.21.2005 / 222.8 / 20.8% / 24.21% / 3.4%
06.21.2005 / 221.6 / 23.0% / 25.23% / 2.2%
05.21.2005 / 228.3 / 23.3% / 25.89% / 2.3%

It's hard for me to understand, deep within the wells of my brain, whether I am seeing actual results or whether I am simply rationalizing the numbers.

On the one hand, in the past three months I have lost 7 pounds -- which is 13 weeks, or about 0.5 pounds per week. I think it should be more like 2 pounds per week, at least a pound. But, on the other hand, it would appear that my body weight has dropped about 3%. And that drop is consistent across different methods (tanita from 23.3% to 20.1% (3.2% drop) and Calipers from 25.9% to 22.3% (3.6%)). These are both significant, and the corroboration tends to show that the drop didn't come from more aggressive body measuring via calipers as I had once feared.

But let's look at the other metric. The metric of body measurements:

08.21.2005
uw
08.21.2005 = 40.00
07.22.2005 = 40.25
06.23.2005 = 40.50
05.21.2005 = 41.00

So it appears I lost an inch from the upper waist.

Lower waist
08.21.2005 = 38.00
07.22.2005 = 39.00
06.23.2005 = 39.25
05.21.2005 = 38.50

Mostly a downward trend, from 38.5 to 38.00 or from 39.25 to 38.00.

chest:
08.21.2005 = 43.00
07.22.2005 = 43.00
06.23.2005 = 43.50
05.21.2005 = 44.25

Body measurement mostly shows a downward trend, with some exceptions.

CALORIC CONSUMPTION

I must confess I believe the issue still remains: Caloric consumption. I think one can only get so far via workouts. And I'm afraid that perhaps I'm at that point. Surely part of the slow down on weight loss has something to do with the change of jobs that puts me in front of massive calories on a regular basis. It'll be interesitng in the fall to see how that changes, given my new schedule.

HOW TO CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
* I think the level of exercise is quite sufficient for the goal at this point;
* I can do a much better job of tracking calories
* do better job of sticking to budget of calories -- I think it should go down to about 2,000 calories and see how that does for weight loss for 4-8 weeks.