I am new to this and just want to know how many calories you currently eat and how many hours per week do you exercise for.

Help me plz...thanks.

There is no set answer for this, everybody is different,It depends on your goal weight and how many calories you need to maintain that and you will learn that as you go along. I find for me I eat about 1400-1500 calories a day, I am short and small boned,that will be a factor and how you feel and look at your desired weight. There are as many answers to your question as there are dieters.

I know...but I just want an idea.

Figure 13 to 15 calories per pound to maintain. (Men 14-16). Use the lower end of the range if you aren't active, the higher end more if you are. But, really the only way to figure it out for your body is to count calories for a while and see what happens.

On cardio, a rule of thumb is that we expend 5-7 cals/min doing moderate intensity cardio, regardless of what the machine tells us. (Manufacturers have an incentive to overstate calories burned.) Half an hour of cardio per day will, in theory, give you 300 extra calories to play with at maintenance levels. The "afterburn" effect is trivial, in the greater scheme of things.

//b. strong,
Kim

I stay between 1200 to 1500 calories on a typical day. If its a holiday I might go as high as 1800 to 2000. I haven't had more than that in 3 years.
As far as exericise...5 days a week, at lunch time. I run for 20 minutes then do strength training for another 20. Then I hustle back to the office.

13-15 calories per lb! Wow! I work out on average 6hrs per week so that would give me 2,415 calories. I can't imagine eating so many calories!

1500 - 1700 calories; 3 hours' worth of exercise per week.

This may sound more discouraging for you than helpful.

I'm female, 5'0" tall, and over 60 years old.
To maintain my weight around 115 lbs --which is a 22.5 BMI,
My daily calorie average must stay around 1050 calories.

I do low-impact exercise of around 7 hours a week,
however, for me, this is merely a fitness issue,
because whether or not I exercise doesn't affect my weight at all.

No idea. I don't count calories. Never have.

(Which doesn't mean that I don't pay attention to calories, or look them up & try to learn about them, or monitor portions, or worry a lot about food choices. In fact, regarding the latter, I'm fairly strict, as I didn't have any "goodies" AT ALL during the holiday season.)

But I exercise seven days a week, somewhere between 12-14 hours a week.

I've no idea either. I lost 137.5lbs so far without any calorie counting. Some would say I've done it wrong, but it worked for me. I do choose low fat/calorie versions of lots of things and am aware of calories, but it would just have never worked for me.
I exercise 5/6 days a week for approx an hour each day, and I am very strict during the week, with one planned treat each weekend. No snacks in between meals, if I'm hungry, I stay hungry til meal time. But I'm healthier, fitter, slimmer and happier than I've ever been so I'll keep doing what I'm doing.

The rules of thumb are just that, rules of thumb. Those of us who sit in front of a computer all day are going to have even lower maintenance requirements than the "average" person.

I wonder, in a scientific curiosity sort of way, to what extent the 3fc population also has abnormally low metabolism, both because of selection effects (all of us have had, at one point or another, issues with our weight -- otherwise we wouldn't be here) and because of the long-term effects of dieting on metabolism.

//b. strong,
Kim

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I eat about 1800 during the week and probably 2500-3000+ on the weekend and I exercise about 7 hours per week.

I average 1950-2000 per day to maintain happily, with the occasional splurge. I exercise 7-10 hours per week.

I guess that really is a lot, isn't it?

I hadn't been thinking of it that way, only that I wanted to keep it at that level but not do anything MORE.

I think I've started comparing myself with the gym rat population & even the instructors, rather than with your average person who goes to the gym, and this is why I don't think it's a lot.

Anyway, maybe that's a consequence of my not counting calories.

Another reason that I don't count calories is that when I had an eating disorder, years ago, I did journal my food intake in great detail, in lots of tiny notebooks (this being before PCs, ahem) with lots of math in them, that accumulated in a sad little pile that seemed a testimonial to my tendency toward obsessiveness. So this time around, I vowed not to do this. I really think it helped me do it in a moderate, slower, more healthy manner.

Everyone's different, and we all have to work around our own personal pathologies. ;-)