Hey everyone- I want to get started calorie counting! Ya'll have convinced me After having a way hard time with weight watchers, I hope this will be an easier option to take account of my daily intake.

I'm 5'5" and I weigh 174. I do the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred each day for my exercise and I walk everywhere, but I'm not sure how many calories that burns. How do I figure out how many calories I need to eat to fuel my body but still lose weight, and how do i figure out how many calories I burn each day?

I've done a lot of searching but everything I've found seems pretty vague. Any help would be much appreciated!
Carly

Try around 1,400 - 1,600 calories a day. Experiment. The caloric intake calculators can be a bit deceiving. If you have no loss after a week or two, either take away 100 cals, or up it by 100 cals. It's all about trial & error.

Hey Car.

Part of calorie counting is figuring out the level of calories that work for you. It's a little bit of a tweaking process for everyone.

What I do is start with a calorie calculator online. The one I use the most is here - I've found it to be close to accurate for me:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

For example, what it tells me when I enter my current stats (163 lb and working out 3x per week) is this:
Maintenance: 1919 Calories/day
Fat Loss: 1535 Calories/day
Extreme Fat Loss: 1304 Calories/day

If I enter my goal weight (130 lbs) I get this:
Maintenance: 1713 Calories/day
Fat Loss: 1371 Calories/day
Extreme Fat Loss: 1040 Calories/day

So I am choosing to go with 1500 calories per day, which seems to be working well for me. I generally eat between 1400 and 1600 ... which gives me a bit of a range to work with and I don't freak out if I don't eat EXACTLY 1500 calories.

I also workout 4x-5x a week, so I know that I burn a few extra calories per week.

One thing is that I don't track calories burned in exercise. I know some people do, but for me that gets too detailed and then I wind up playing numbers games with myself - telling myself that I burned X number of calories on Monday, so I don't have to burn that many or work that hard on Tuesday, etc., etc. I just workout and figure that whatever calories my workout burns are a "bonus".

So that's pretty much what I do: Eat 1500 calories a day, and workout 4x-5x per week. So far, when I stick to that plan I lose at a slow but consistent rate.

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That's what I did when i was doing WW, I didn't count the exercise points in, it got too messy.

OK if someone could look at this and let me know how I'm doing, this is what I ate today so far - it's 6:00 pm and I have already had dinner, and I thought I had eaten too much today so I was planning on only drinking water for the rest of the day. This IS a typical day, except that usually I'd have a light breakfast like a piece of toast with light margarine, or a bowl of oatmeal with a tablespoon of brown sugar on it, something simple.

Breakfast - skipped today (had to take daughter to doc way too early!)

Lunch - 6" vegetarian subway sub, 167 (according to subway.com...? i had no cheese, only veggies and light oil and mustard on whole wheat, is that really how many calories I ate there?)

Dinner - 2 Boca burger patties, no bun, with 3 T ketchup - 170 1 1/2 cups of soy nog (yum) - 225

Snacks - 1 serving (24 pieces) Teddy Grahams - 130 ; cheese stick - 70 ; cup of peaches in extra light syrup - 70 ; homemade sugar cookie - 130 (? just went off the count on this site)

Total : 962 calories

That is honestly all I ate today. I took the advice to keep a food journal and I wrote down every single thing I ate today. I don't feel that the way I ate today is any different than a regular day. Yesterday, I kept my food journal and began thinking "Maybe I'm not eating ENOUGH?!" haha! So today I tracked the calories as best as I could.

What do you think?? I appreciate your guys' help so much, thanks!!

EDIT: Also, I did the calorie calculator on that site and this is what it calculated for me, with every day exercise (does 30 day shred count as every day exercise? i do that...)

Maintenance: 2541 Calories/day
Fat Loss: 2033 Calories/day
Extreme Fat Loss: 1525 Calories/day

Any insight here would be super helpful.

Nooo. There's no way a veggie sub could be only 167 calories. The bread alone is more than that. Oh, I just checked subway.com and see what happened. The weight of the sandwich is 167g. The calories are 230, but that's w/out the oil - so I'd estimate maybe 350 for the sandwich.

That seems about right for a total of 395 cals.

400 cals total.

Daily total: 1145 cals.

That's a little low, honestly. You shouldn't be eating less than 1200 calories on average each day to get the most nutrition in. And at your weight, you can probably eat around 1500 cals and still lose weight.

Ok, aside from that, honestly? I don't see a whole lot of good nutrition on there.

The veggie sub is ok, but carb heavy with all the bread (although whole wheat is better than white). The boca patties are good.
The peaches in light syrup are ok, but you'd be better off with a fresh peach or a peaches in unsweetened juice. The cheese stick is ok, too. But you're very low in veggies (other than the sub). And the biggest thing is that you ate 550+ calories today in sugary junk - over 1/2 of the calories you consumed today were cookies, grahams, peaches in syrup, and soy nog.

When you eat like that, what's going to happen is that you're going to be hungry all the time and eventually you won't be able to stay on your diet.

Another thing that might happen - although it doesn't happen to everyone, it does to a lot of people - is that even though you're eating at or below a calorie level to lose weight, because you're not eating enough nutritious food, you're going to stall. Your body will start holding on to fats because it's sensing that you're going to cut back on calories w/out providing a higher level of nourishment - you go into a sort of "survival mode".

Oh, and I don't see breakfast! Breakfast is important - it helps get your metabolism jump started in the morning and sets you up so you won't be starving by lunch and overeat.

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Do yourself a favor and don't repeat the mistake that I made.

Listen to these folks when they tell you that your calories are TOO LOW! I just *wasted* 2 months having to learn that lesson the hard way. I can be an undereater when I want to be, and I was taking in on average about 1,000/day (without feeling like I was starving). I was also working out hard at the gym 5 days/week. In 2 months, I lost a measely 2 pounds. Only a teeny bit in inches as well.

I finally listened to what others were saying. This past week I faithfully logged my food and stayed in the 1,500-1,600 range, and I lost 2.8 pounds. I know every week won't be this good, but clearly my body was thanking me for fueling it. It feels so opposite of what you might think (less is best) but your body really will have a mind of its own if you don't give it enough.

Good luck, you can do it

This is really helpful, thanks so much!

This may be too much to ask, but what would you suggest as substitutions? Obviously I don't have sugar cookies and soy nog every day, but I do tend to have some kind of calorie-full sweet pretty often!

I have a hard time being creative with snacks, and I am a snacker, so I'll turn to my daughters snacks (teddy grahams... haha!). I guess another part of it is being on a budget, I love fresh fruits and veggies but they are so expensive here that I am limited in what I can buy. I keep my house stocked with apples, bananas, spinach, sweet potatoes/yams, and frozen veggies.

Any suggestions help - I feel like I'm having that "aha!" moment, you know what I mean?! Thanks so much!

Glad we can help!

I tihnk you could probably budget in a sweet at least 4 or 5 times a week. Or if you wanted (and think you could handle it) you could not have a daily sweet and allow yourself a full sugar treat one day a week (like dessert on Friday or something like that).

I totally get the budget thing. In fact I'm working on a series of blog posts about what I eat each day and how much it costs. It's been really fascinating. But here are some ideas for you that don't break the bank.

Apples are a big standby for me for morning snacks. You can get a bag of apples at the grocery store or Sam's Club for less than $5 with about a dozen apples in it. That'll give you an apple a day for nearly 2 weeks. I try to eat an apple and a slice of cheese about mid-morning every morning.

Yogurt is good for a snack too, but I'd recommend buying the large container of plain yogurt (unsweetened). It's cheaper to measure out your own 8oz servings, and better for you to add your own sweetener. I sometimes add Splenda to my yogurt, but sometimes I add a spoonful of organic strawberry jam (made with cane sugar, not high fructose corn syrup) or apricot jam. I'd rather have the calories from the sugar (45 calories for a spoonful of jam) than eat the corn syrup in the store-sweetened brands.

I eat oats for breakfast most mornings because they keep me really really full. I buy steel cut oats - a bag is $3.99 but that's 17 servings - or $0.23 per serving. They take longer to cook, but I put 4 servings worth into the crock pot overnight and then it's ready when I get up in the morning.

Boiled eggs make great snacks - at 80 cals each. I often take one to the office with me and will slice it over a wasa cracker with a tiny thin spread of mayo (whole fat mayo - I loathe the fat free kind). That makes a snack of about 170 calories and helps me with my need for something crunchy.

A banana is a pretty good snack, although it's one of the higher calorie fruits and it's also high in carbs. But have a banana with some peanut butter and you're getting great protein and carbs mixed to keep you feeling full. Slice a half a banana and 1 T of peanut butter on a wasa cracker and again, that's under 200 calories and very filling.

I'm a big fan of hummus, too. I use great northern beans rather than chickpeas, since they're a little milder in flavor. Blend a can of beans with a clove of garlic and some tahini and maybe a tiny bit of olive oil. A 1/4 cup of hummus is about 140 calories. You can dip veggies in it or spread it on a wasa cracker - again, under 200 cals.

Hm. I know there's more stuff that I eat regularly, but I'm drawing a blank. What other veggies can you get reasonably inexpensively where you are?

.

If this will help you out any, here's what I ate today:

Breakfast - 260 cals
1 serving steel cut oats with 1/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese mixed in (I don't like sweets in the morning - and I love cheese).

Morning Snack - 90 cals
1 Gala apple.

Lunch - 340 calories
6 chicken and veggie steamed dumplings (I buy them in bulk, frozen, at the local Asian market and take them to work. A minute in the microwave and they're perfectly steamed) and a little ginger sesame sauce (also bought at the Asian market). Calorie counts taken off the containers.

Afternoon snack - 130 cals
1 container Fage 2% plain yogurt

Afternoon snack - 90 cals
1 can V8 juice (I actually drank this in the car on the way to the gym)

Post workout - 120 cals
1 scoop of protein powder in water.

Dinner - 400 calories
Stir fried veggies (broccoli, cabbage, carrot, onion, garlic, celery, mushroom, ginger, sauteed in olive oil) and grilled chicken breast.

This is 1430 calories. I'm gonna have an Edy's Lemon Whole Fruit bar (popsicle type thing) here in about 10 mins. And that'll be 90 calories, which will put me at a total of 1520 for the day. Right on target for me.

To drink today I had 1 cup of coffee in the morning (black, no sweetener), 1 Diet Coke about midafternoon, and slightly under a gallon of water over the course of the day (including the 20oz bottle that I gulped down on my way home from the gym!).

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That is very helpful, thanks!

I guess the hardest part for me is that I can't have dairy or eggs (for some reason string cheese does not make me sick, unless I have it like every single day). Dairy just makes my digestive system messed up, but eggs, well I'm actually allergic to them.

Anyway, it wasn't so hard back home there are a lot of health food stores with substitutes like soy based everything- but where we live now there are not that many options. Anyway, thanks again I really do appreciate it. I'll try to do better tomorrow, and I'll ask for more advice as I need it!
Thanks so much!

Did you read the Frequently Asked Questions Sticky at the top of the Calorie Counters forum? It explains in detail how to find the right calorie level for you. Everyone has a different metabolism, and some people are going to need 1400 a day at your current weight, and others will need 1200 or 1700. It is all very individual.

Since you probably didn't read it (hence the thread ) Start out with a higher number for your size-say 1600ish a day. See what happens with that after a couple of weeks. If you lose a pound or two per week, then you are right on target. If you don't lose, go down to 1500 per day for a couple of weeks, and see what happens.

We have to play a little bit, to find the calorie level that is right for US, as individuals.

carcar, are you lactose intolerant? You can buy milk for that problem, I believe it is called Lactaid.

get yourself a good pedometer and put it on your waistband every morning..you will at least know how far you are walking..

30 day shred is good--I am doing it too

I started calorie counting two months ago (three months into lifestyle change) and I am down 20 pounds since then..my body responds best to ZIG ZAG dieting--meaning some days I eat more than others...One day I might eat 1600 calories and the next day 1100..you can search the term and plenty will pop up for you..

I wanted to ask--does anyone here "weigh" their food? I am thinking to begin. I measure my cereal and milk and things. If nothing else, it shows me on a daily basis what a serving looks like. I am not sure if my meat portions are correct--I know it's supposed to be like the size of your palm but what if it's a thin piece of meat..etc...

I do weigh my food. I bought a food scale at Target for about $35 and use it daily. It works for me because I found that even measuring can be off by several ounces/grams depending on the food. And for some foods it's not a big deal. But for some, like, say peanut butter, it makes a difference.

I don't tend to weigh veggies as much as I do other stuff, unless it's a really starchy veggie like a squash or potato or something like that.

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