I am new to the calorie counting world and just don't really know how much I should be eating on a daily basis. I'm at 185 and trying to lose 40 pounds. I go to the gym 4-5 days a week and do about 45 minutes of cardio and weight training as well. Just curious about how I figure out how many calories I should be consuming per day...

Hey there,

You'll need to use one of the online calorie calculators: enter your age, height, weight and activity level and see what they say you need to eat to maintain your current weight. (Hint: put in 'lightly active' rather than moderately or strenuously active for a more accurate count.)

http://www.caloriecontrol.org/calcalcs.html

The general rule is that 1lb of fat equals 3500 calories. If you reduce your calories by 500/day, you should lose a pound a week. If you reduce by 1000, you should lose two pounds a week. (Or conversely, if you reduce your calories by 500 and burn 500 at the gym, then you'd probably lose 2lb a week.

These things are all pretty individual however, so you'll need to play around with your calorie counts until you find what works for your body. Starting at 1500 calories a day would probably be pretty safe.

I wish you could remember what you normally eat ... put that in a program like fitday.com and see how much it is. From there you can decide how much less you'd like to try.

Stick around ... we'll help you through.

My diet varies so much from day to day, it's hard to get a guage of what is "normal" for me. The only real constant is breakfast. I have a cup of special k red berries with some fat free milk (just enough to soak the cereal). Occasionally I'll have a glass of carnation instant breakfast instead. Lunch varies between a small roast beef or turkey and american cheese on pumpernickel bread or maybe some yogurt with granola and berries. Dinners are always tricky to plan since I have a very picky boyfriend to cook for!

You could try putting in what you remember from yesterday and today ... every little bite and nibble And we could have a look from there.

Right now, I am counting calories while following the Wendie Plan from Weight Watchers. I've had great success so far. On my weight loss journal/everyday musings, I have it listed by weight group near the bottom. The title of my blog entry is "Wendie Plan in Calories and Points":

http://hermitislandlover.blogspot.com/

I hope it's ok to post it, if not, Mods by all means remove it......it's just some of my diet ramblings and silly family stuff. The Wendie Plan for calories right now is at the bottom of the page.

Others probably feel comfortable staying at one set of calories per day- it's up to you how you do it, just make sure you get your proteins, fruits and veggies in. Hope this helps.

Steelslady ... I think some folks have a link to their blog in their signature. A lot of us have links to our fitday sites in our profiles. I think it'll OK.

Thanks, Susan. I just wanted to make sure I didn't go against any rules. I've been doing what you and several others recommended with journaling online as well as offline, and it has been a tremendous help! You folks are great here.