Hi everyone.. i know each person is different but maybe someone had similar stats and could give me an estimate... calculating yuor caloric need should not be a really hard thing..

I have gone to a few different sites that take your activity into account and my age/weight and gender.. and one said to maintain my weight take in 3200 another said 3400 and when I went to usda.gov (food pyramid people..) they said 2500 now i know take off 500 a day to lose 2lbs a week..

I do an exercisie video for 30 min 5-6 x a wk and sit alot but getting more active as I feel more toned and stronger.. yeah!! i weigh 234 and i am a 43 yr young female mom. hehehe..

SO any tips on what you did or do take in if you are around my weight and activity or chime in with your calories regardless ..i can use all the guidance I can... all i know is i have been trying to do the ww at home and i am at 28 with 35 flex points to divide thru the week as I wish.. and when i plug in the food i am taking in it is about 1400-1500 cal a day!! .. and I think it is just too low for my body especially since I am more active now.. but three yrs ago when i did this program i lost 25 lbs in 10 wks.. and kept it off.. but now i am thinking just counting calories would be better.. so any help i would love!! thanks in advance.. Kim

You're right, this does get to be a bit of a personnal journey to find the proper number. But I can give a few points that have helped me find what I think is a closer to "real" number:

1.) Always choose "sedentary" for the lifestyle on the daily maintenance calculators. Then, use an activity calorie burn calculator to factor back in your exercise and other activities. I find you get a much more accurate number.

2.) Use several calculators, throw out the highest and lowest number you get, then find the average of the rest. Or, if you aren't a complete math nerd , just pick one that's somewhere in the middle.

3.) 1 lb of fat equals 3500 cals. You actually need to reduce by 500 cals from your total cals burned each day to lose 1lb. It's 1000 per day to lose 2lbs.

Just remember that it is recommended that your exercise equals at least half of your shortage. So, if you want to lose 2 lbs per week, you can:

find your sedentary daily maintenance
add in any significant activities (ex: I don't count my job as it is basically sedentary)
add in your exercise (at least 500 cal's worth)
subtract 1000

This is what worked for me when I was first starting out. Just remember that you can only control your eating and your exercise, you cannot "force" your body to lose weight. If you eat right and exercise the weight will come off, but it will happen on it's own time, not always smoothly. (Lately, I tend to not lose weight at all for a little over a week, then 2 week's worth of weight loss will appear over back-to-back days.)

Good luck!

At your current weight, start with trial and error-it is the easiest way.

Start out at 2000 calories a day each week given your current weight, and weigh in one week from the time you start. If you lose a pound or two, then stick with 2000 calories until you go a couple of weeks with no loss.

Then, simply drop it to 1800-1900 calories a day. You will have to continually drop the calorie level (only a little at a time-100 or therabouts for each drop) every 10-25 pounds or so to keep losing, since your body will need less calories as it gets smaller.

You don't want to drop TOO quickly though. I safe rate of weight loss is about 1/2-2 pounds per week. You may lose 3-4 a week for the first week or two due to water weight being shed as well, and then it usually slows. If you drop your calories too quickly due to impatience, then what happens is you end up 30 pounds from goal with "nowhere to drop" your calorie level to safely. (1200 is usually the standard MINIMUM that you should be taking in each day...so you don't want to be at that level until the tail end of your weight loss journey.)

You will also find that it helps when you start getting fitter, to periodically "ramp up" your workouts to adjust to your fitter body. If you do a 1 mile walk now each day, for instance-then a couple months from now you should be doing 2-rather than staying stagnant and stalling your results.

If you use 2 pound hand weights with a video now-then a couple of months from now when it isn't hard any longer-get 3 pounds...and then 5...and so forth. Keep increasing the difficulty of your workouts to get more fit.

I don't use the calorie calculators online to guage my calorie intake, simply because there are way too many factors for them to really be accurate. You just have to have a starting point, and then slowly adjust it from there over time.

I hope that I have helped in making it "easier" for a beginner. I think easiest is always best at first-you can start tracking other things in your diet later if you wish, as your knowledge increases.

Good luck,

Aphil

When I weighed 234, I was eating about 1400-1500 calories and doing about 90 minutes of exercise per day. You gotta keep in mind, though, that I was a little older than you (46) and hypothyroid, so losing is tough for me and my numbers probably aren't right for YOU.

Aphil's absolutely right that everyone's different and the only accurate way to find out the correct calories for you is trial and error. Metabolic calculators are notoriously inaccurate and you can totally drive yourself nuts with them. Most calculators that I've checked say that I can eat 50% more than I do and still maintain. Well, I've been maintaining for four years and sure would love to eat what they say - but I gain. Every time. Darn it!

The reason that metabolic calculators are so often wrong is that they're based on averages that may have no relationship to you and your unique circumstances. One of the most widely used ones (Harris-Benedict) is based on a study done 86 years ago of low-normal weight people (I wrote about it here ) Why we think it has relevance to overweight, more sedentary people in the 21st century is beyond me.

Bottom line - I lost my weight (and keep it off) without ever once worrying about how many calories my RMR is or how many I burned in a day. Just like Aphil suggests, I simply monitored my intake and my weight loss and adjusted accordingly.

Since you're doing WW at home and it's is a good plan - maybe try following the points range for your weight and see how you do?

As these ladies said!

When I started calorie counting I weighed 280 something. I started with 2000 calories/day and found I lost a couple of pounds a week on that. So, I stuck with it. As Aphil said, as I've lost, I've dropped how much I eat. Now at 208, I'm averaging around 1850/day. I don't stick to a strict limit each day, but look at averages over a week or two.

I've also significantly ramped up my exercise since that 280something weight. Actually, at that time I wasn't yet regularly exercising, and now I'm trying to get in over 30 minutes/day. Now I'm losing an average of about 1 1/2 pounds/week...

So, it IS, to some extent, a guessing game -- and all of us are different -- but if you can find your place, the math seems to work!

I'm 225, but male and I play basketball for 4-6 hours a week. That said, if I stick to 2500 calories, I lose about a lb a week. I'd like to eat less, but it's hard enough for me to stick to 2500.

Hehe. I suspect we get hungrier, too, so it's not like we get to be more satisfied when cutting.

I started my weight loss journey at exactly 234 lbs. Although I have done low-carb plan, I have tracked my calories. I am 5'7 and 46 yrs. old. I eat 1200-1400 calories daily and have lost average of 2 lbs. a week for most of my journey. My metabolism isn't too great and any more calories and I would gain weight. The calculators said I would maintain at 2200 calories, but not me, I would gain.

I dunno...after my 5 hour dance workshop on Saturday, and the fact that I am expecting...I think I could have out eaten any man.