So frustrated with lack of change on scale

Here's the deal. I record my daily food intake on Sparkpeople. I haven't been absolute in my food control, but I've been hitting a reasonable range of calories and macronutrients for months. I can see what I'm doing wrong when my weight creeps up a bit; usually it's sodium or a large meal too late in the day. What I can't figure out is what I do right. I saw my first loss in two weeks on the day I created that thread above, but that quickly bounced right back up to the 240 range like it always does. Haven't seen the scale go down since, and this will probably go on for another week or two beore I do, at which point it'll bounce up again for 2-3 weeks. Seeing a drop on the scale feels like a mean joke at this point.

It's not like I'm trying to scrape off the last stubborn ten pounds or prep for a bodybuilding competition. I'm not content to just lose a pant size while staying at 240; hooray for muscle gain, but I'll still have to shop at Lane Bryant. I need to lose numbers on the scale.

Fat loss should be easier than this at my weight, right?

Here is an example of a GOOD nutrition day. I have a digital food scale, so all the measurements are exact, including the recipe items, which I made myself.



Note: The "80-calorie snack" was a thing I grabbed at CVS, some sort of diet bar that had 8 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber. I couldn't find the label when I did my food log, so I faked the nutrition info as best as I could.

Protein's a bit low and carbs are a bit high (ignore Sparkpeople's recommendation on the carbs), but fats, fiber, and saturated fat are all in good range. Overall calories are great. I did have a NROL4W workout yesterday so I burned +/- 600 calories.

On bad days, my carbs will shoot up to around 225 and I'll hit the high range of my calorie goals. There's always a white carb present on a bad calorie day -- usually white bread or rice. I try to stay away from the stuff but sometimes it creeps in.

I tried dropping carbs and increasing protein, but man, that's hard to maintain. I'm going to try harder this week by baking some chicken breasts and lean pork chops, and stocking up on protein powder again. I just get REALLY bored with my choices. Food isn't a joy anymore; it's homework. Cooking is a drag, and going out to restaurants makes me mildly anxious, and then I get annoyed and turn off my overclocked brain and eat things I shouldn't.

So: What do you recommend I do differently? Is it typical to see a small loss, then a small gain that gets stuck there for an intolerable amount of time, then another tiny loss? Why is the "1-2 pound average loss per week" such a magical mystery to me?

I'm open to advice. Be prepared for more questions -- not because I'm trying to be difficult, but because there's a lot of conflicting information and I'm really trying to understand why I'm supposed to do one thing and not another.

Thanks for reading