[EveLHaelf]

Hello all you wonderful people! I recently told my stubborness to take a hike and have come to the conclusion that in order for me to be successful at weight loss and some day maintenance, I need to start counting calories consumed and burnt etc. I have been reading Jillian Michael's book winning by losing and have been using the calculations in there to try and figure out my BMR and AMR. And I know that if I want to lose 2 pounds a week I have to create a deficit of 7,000 calories a week. Now, using her calculations to figure out my bmr: 655 + (4.3 x weight in lbs.) +(4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years) =BMR 655 + 1053.5 + 303.5 - 103.4 I get 1910.6 as my BMR. Then she goes on to figuring out your daily activity level and my number is 1.2 meaning pretty much sedentary. Then the last number is my exercise expendeture which she has a chart for but this is where I get confused...how can this number be accurate? I mean, when I start exercising I'm not going to be doing the same exercise every day or for the same intensity....But anyway based on the chart my number is 449. So multiplying my BMR (1910.6) by my daily activity of 1.2 and then adding my exercise expenditure of 449 my AMR is 2741.72.

After figuring all that out, I'm still lost! She doesn't go into very much detail as to how to figure out how to determine how many calories I should eat in a day. She does say that we should vary the intake from day to day throughout the week to avoid a plateau. Her example then is if I want to lose 2 pounds in a week I have to create a deficit of 7,000 over the course of that week. So to figure out my weekly amr i take 2741.72x7 and get= 19192.04. So according to that, in order to lose 2 pounds i take 19192.04-7000 and get 12192.04 and that is my weekly caloric intake. So if i evenly divide my weekly number by 7 i get 1741 so I should be eating about 1700 calories a day? And then if I want to vary it from day to day, how would I go about that? And this 1700 calories consumed a day in order to lose 2 pounds a week....what about exercise? Does that mean that if i'm creating a deficit of 7,000 a week, I need to make sure I burn 1,000 calories through exercise every day? Or is it already included in the math and whatever exercise I do is just a bonus?

I also know that as I lose weight, I will be needing to lower my daily calorie intake, so would I just redo that math factoring in my new weight? I love Jillian to death and I trust her advice because I've seen her results on The biggest loser, but I'm just slow when it comes to math so this is all really confusing me! Is there an easier way to figure all this out? Or if anyone can help me with understand the book that would be awesome! I'm looking into buying a heart rate monitor to better track how many calories i burn during various exercises.....

[Thinfor5Minutes]

Wow...that sounds waaaaayyyyy too complicated. I'd just try 1700 calories for a week and see how you do. If you lose two pounds, then great! If you lose less, maybe take it down to 1600 a week and so on. It's all experimental.

[EveLHaelf]

Originally Posted by Thinfor5Minutes

Wow...that sounds waaaaayyyyy too complicated. I'd just try 1700 calories for a week and see how you do. If you lose two pounds, then great! If you lose less, maybe take it down to 1600 a week and so on. It's all experimental.

Right, that makes sense. I'm still curious as to how the 3500 and 7000 calories come in to play. Would I actually have to burn 1000 calories just through exercise a day to get that deficit? Or is it combined in with my lowering my daily calories consumed? Because roughly my BMR minus the 1700 equals around 600 in difference so would I just make up the 400 or so calories burnt through exercise? Again, thank you to anyone who reads this. I can go on tangents sometimes so sorry if I lost anyone!

[Mrs Snark]

It doesn't really matter how you create your deficit -- by either food or by exercise, or by both.

Yes, you can do a 600 calorie food deficit and then burn another 400 calories in exercise every day.

To vary it day by day, you might eat 300 calories less on Monday (1400) and then 300 calories more on Tuesday (2000), etc. The idea is that your weekly average is about where you want it to be when you look at the whole 7 days.

[me4life]

if i read it right your calorie need is 2741.72 per day to have a deficit of 7000 you would subtract 1000 per day from your calorie need (1000 x 7 days=7000) so yeah basically around 1700 a day and your activity is pretty much included in that

[EveLHaelf]

Thanks to everyone who replied. Your comments helped clear away most of the fog in my brain! I think I understand now.