Hello,
I am currently on South Beach and would like to transition to calorie counting. How does a new person like this know how many calories I should be eating. How do I calculate this. There are so many formulas on the web. I need something simple to go by. I am a Type 2 diabetic and I know my rules on that. I exercise 4-5 days a week using my Leslie Sansone tapes at usually 4 mile aerobics and sometimes I do my treadmill and weight lifting.

I am 56 years old and will be 57 next month, I am 5'6" tall.
My diabetes is totally under control. I have already lost 26lbs. doing so many diets. I need some versitility in the way I eat. We go out to eat once a week and I do love to cook.

Any help you could give me or where I could be referenced to would so be appreciated. I love these boards and would also love to get to know you all.

Thank you so much,
Melanie in Colorado

Well, I just put my information into my Palm and it tells me what to eat, and when to exercise, calorie deficit, etc...

Maybe you should use one of the formulas to find out in general how many calories you need to be eating for maintenance and subtract 500-1000 calories for weight loss. I personally aim for 2 lbs. a week loss (1,000 calorie deficit). Everyone loses at different calorie deficits, so you just have to figure out what number works best for you. There are lots of websites that figure this out for you, but I understand that they are not very accurate.

Maybe someone will chime in with a good formula to use ;-)

Melanie -- what I'd do if I were you is to continue South Beach for about a week or two and write down everything your eat and calculate the calories. That way you'll know how much you have been eating and be best able to judge where to tweak your daily calories from there. If you are losing at a rate that has comfortable, you'd just continue eating that amount of calories, just in a broader range of foods if you are not planning on being low carb any more. If your loss has recently slowed, you may want to lower your daily calories a little and keep tweaking from there going forward.

Good luck!

Yes, what Tyler said! That way it's not an estimate based on someone else, but on what you are already doing!

There is a calorie calculator at thedailyplate.com that allows you to put in your stats and get calories based on how much you want to lose. Based on my experience, it seems fairly accurate.

I use sparkpeople.com

But they way I'd go is weight x 10 x .75.

In your case 174 x 10 x .75 (75% of your daily intake to lose weight) = 1305 calories

How funny I'm going from Calorie counting to South Beach!