I have been doing Weight Watchers for about 4 years. ( I have done every single diet possible!) But I am just burned out on counting points, and wanted a change of pace. I have went to several different websites to tell me how many calories I need to eat each day to lose approx 1-2 lbs a week. I am getting ranges from 1200-1700. Which one do I follow? Or is calorie counting more a trial and error type thing. I have about 6 pounds to go until I reach my original goal of 125. I exercise 6 days a week, burning 2000-2500 calories each week according to my heart rate monitor. Is there a middle ground that everyone just starts at and goes from there? Thanks all

Sexy avatar!

And Welcome!!! Great job on your loss so far!!!

Yup, trial and error. I would recommend starting with 1200 and feeling around for what your body responds to best. Slowly go up from there. I find calorie shifting with an average of 1400 works best for me.
Did the calculators account for activity level?

(BTW, your ticker and your weight info seem to be different, you might want to look into that)

When I decided to do calorie counting a few weeks ago, I found a lot of good info in the thread at the top of the calorie counters page titled calorie counting: frequently asked questions. (I'd just put the link here, but I'm not sure how to do that) Hope that helps. Best wishes! You've done great so far!

yes, the calorie counters that i found included activity level. i wasnt sure what 'my ' level is (light, moderate or active), so I just picked light and moderate and i got around 2000-2300 to maintain..and 1200-1700 to lose.

ok, i will go with trial and error on this one . i will also look through the threads at the top and see what i can learn ;o) thank you both !!

i cant figure out how to change my little ticker? it is not right anymore and I dont know how to fix it.

I've found a drastic difference in the amount of calories I supposedly burn daily on various on-line calculators. The range (for me) is between 2200-2800. Pretty big difference. CalorieKing is definitely the most conservative, and for me it's turned out to be fairly accurate. It's actually pretty scary how accurate that 2200 cals/day is for me. I have a spreadsheet that I put in my weight and my calories for each day and have it calculate the average of daily calories burned. One thing you may want to start with is to convert the daily points you were eating to calories, and eat that many calories per day. (50 cals = 1 pt) Then you can adjust as needed.

The most successful calorie count that I've done was outlined in the book Thin For Life (love it! highly recommend it). It has a four week "jump start" program where you start really low (1000) and move up (100 per week). So week 1 is 1000 calories, week 2 is 1100, week 3 is 1200, and week 4 is 1300. After that you add a bit more at a time, until you determine your "maintenance weight" (mine was 2700).

It worked like a charm... the low levels of calories were easy to stick to because they were divided into food groups (i.e. dairy, protein, carbs, etc.). The protein was the largest group (around 300 calories). It was really eye opening to me how filling protein is!! I'm a carb junkie ;-)

I went from 140 lbs to 121 and kept the weight off for over a year. The reason I'm here is because I'm now at 134 (sigh!!). I stuck to my maintenance calories (2700) for a long time, but then started to exceed them (3500+) and, you guessed it, started packing on the pounds.

Calorie counting does really work, you just have to find the right combination of foods, and make sure that it's mostly high nutrient food and not junk.

Good luck :-)

thanks everyone for your help!