How to determine calories correctly??
 

I am new to this forum, so please pardon me if this question has been asked and answered several times. I am absolutely overwhelmed by trying to figure out how many calories to shoot for in a day's time. Any time I have used an online calculator - I am instructed to injest something crazy like 2500 calories - and this is without consideration for breastfeeding. If I were to eat that many calories there is no way I would lose weight. However, when I start reading about lowering my metabolism by consuming too few calories - it makes me a bit nervous.

When I was doing WW a few years ago - I lost weight on that program, but it was a point system so I am not sure how many calories were in a day's allotment of points.

Currently I am eating between 1200 - 1500 calories and losing about 2 lbs per week. So perhaps this is a good range for me. I am just curious if any of you have had the same results with the online calculators or if you have opinions about how many calories is safe and realistic for long term.
Thanks so much!

The online calculators are often wrong.. If you are losing 1-2 lbs per week than you have found your target calorie range.

I do not know anything about breastfeeding though, hopefully a knowledgeable chick will help you with that aspect. Other than that, it sounds like you're on the right track.

I use the calorie projection from livestrong.com and have lost 58lbs in 20 weeks - and some of that time I was eating 2500 calories, because of how high my weight was. Now my calorie projection is 1880 calories/day. For someone that was 300lbs, dropping down to a 1200 calorie diet would have been too extreme for me, and I don't think I would have lost what I did.
That said, if you are breastfeeding, you need to be sure that you aren't dropping down too far calorie wise or your supply will suffer! Is your supply good now, or do you already struggle?