Hi all,

I'm new to all of this, new to the forum and calorie counting, I've been a low carber on and off for years and finally decided that it's lost it's effectiveness and probably wont help me keep the weight off anyway.

So I'm totally lost and confused!!! I'm not sure how many calories I should be aiming for in a day, nor how much fat etc. FitDay has told me I should be eating around 1700 calories according to my activity level, but I'm not sure how many calories I should be burning to lose weight if I eat 1700 calories.

Also should I be counting fat or carbs at all? is there a limit I shouldn't exceed? I'm so confused!!!

I'm not eating after dinner and also trying to make dinner my least calorific meal of the day, but then I play on my wii fit in the evening, so does it matter if dinner is higher in calories than the other meals (without going over 1700 a day of course)

Sorry for such a long post, I'm just completely lost!!! I thought I could do this as I went along after all my attempts at atkins! Ha, shows what I know!!!

Crunchynut xx

Ok I would highly suggest doing some research to understand how your body burns calories....

First what is your BMR (bmr is the amount your body would burn if you were in bed all day). Then each calculator has multipliers that you can use to find out what your maintenance calories would be at different activity levels. Once you know your maintenance...you can eat 500 calores below that to lose 1 lb per week. Here is a calculator:

http://www.fat2fitradio.com/bmr./

Right, I get it now, thanks for that! I'd never even heard of BMR before!

Wow, thats a long old slog then. According to FitDay I need to cut back by 842 calories a day, meaning I can eat 2150 per day to reach 147lbs by 19/08/10. That is assuming I stick to the amount of activity I'm doing at the moment. 2150 does seem alot to me, I suppose if I stick to what I have been eating the last few days (1700-1800) I'll lose more, it's just that FitDay kept telling me that I mustn't lose more than 2 lbs per week.

Since my BMR is 1831, that means I can only eat 1039 calories if I refuse to get out of bed! But then I suppose if I refuse to get out of bed, I wont be going anywhere near the kitchen!!!

Well I think I have this sussed now, I didn't realise how much there was to calorie counting - I'm just used to counting carbs and losing weight, activity never came into it, if I did some exercise I'd lose even more - bonus! But then I suspect carb counting (or the lack of it!) is what got me to 235lbs in the first place so I shouldn't complain!

Crunchy xx

#1- It isn't an exact science so as long as you are exercising hard (a sweat) for 30-60 minutes, you can be confident that you are burning anywhere from 200-400 calories (or even more for people at a high weight). Don't worry about those numbers too much or you will go mad.

#2- Counting fats or carbs? It depends. Some people (myself) do because I am maintaining and I am working towards fitness competitions. I do about 60 grams of fat and 150 grams of carbs (for my body). MOST people do not need to go to this stage (it is quite difficult and time consuming), it is sort of an "icing on the cake" (pardon!) when it comes to calorie counting. If you are up for it, go for it.