I have been reading some of the threads and i just dont understand what everyone means by calories in vs calories out? i was being really unhealthy and eating about 800-1000 calories a day and working out on my gazelle for an hour plus a day and all i was doing was gaining weight. I understand that 1200 is the bare minimum, but do you need to calculate what you are burning off into your calories and eat what you burn off to get to your 1200??? ANd how exactly do you calculate what you are burning off? I would appreciate any advice you could provide thanks!

The standard calories are usually around 2000/day. If you want to lose weight however, you should eat less than that. It takes 3500 calories to equal one pound. According to Fitday.com, if you're bedbound, you still burn over 1600 calories a day...just breathing/living. So if you eat less than that, you would lose weight. If you're active, you're going to burn more calories than that. As long as you're eating less than you're burning, you should ultimately lose weight. But don't get frustrated if it doesn't happen quickly. Since it takes 3500 calories for just one pound, even if you ate a minimum of 1200 calories and burned 2000 every day, it's still going to take over half a week to lose that pound. And that's pushing limits.

Hi. Your calories in are the ones you get by eating. You can use some of the cool tools at push.tv to calculate your BMI, resting metabolism and daily calories. That way you can see an aproximate of how much calories you need every day.

The safest is to lose one or two pounds per week so if you burn 250 calories each day with exercise and you eat 250 calories less (for example suppose your daily calorie requirement is 1750, then you eat just 1500 calories) then you'll probably lose a pound each week.

Call me stupid (everyone else does ) But until I started doing this seriously I never really knew your burnt calories doing nothing. Ok not nothing, coz your heart is pumping, your lungs are moving, blood is coursing around your body - but I never really "got" that all that activity we are oblivious too burns calories.

I also didn't know you could make you body burn more calories doing nothing by adding exercise, especially weight training.

Until that light went off in my head, I kinda had guilt issues about eating at all (daft I know) but once I accepted my body as this never stopping piece of machinery, it made me feel a lot more empowered about taking control of my eating and exercise.

Listen Kykaree, you are not alone. I had lunch one day with a gal who was eating cwappe ... processed cheese slice, frozen gluck in a plastic plate ... I talked a bit about making new cells. Ya know how your skin sloughs? where do you get the raw materials to make new skin cellls? new blood cells every month? She blinked "I never thought about it."

Honey, you are not alone.

thank you all so much for your input i was really not getting this at all!