i track my food on fatsecret, which is great cuz they have an app for my phone, at it also tracks ww points, but i feel like i've been doing this forever. i'm sort of looking for a new plan that gives me as much flexibility as ww, so what do you guys do?

either i could use a new plan, or i could use some ww/calorie counting buddies. do any of you all do the same thing i do?

i found an online calorie calculator at http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm
and it put me at at a minimum of 1200 calories a day, but my friend is talking about a diet in which you eat 550 cals a day. does that sound too little?

550 calories is DEFINITELY too little. Going that low will put your body into starvation mode and throw off your metabolism. My nutritionist told me that a person of my size (which is coincidentally about your size) burns at least 1200 calories just lying in bed all day.

550 is WAY too little!

I use an application on my iPhone called Lose It. It tracks how many calories i burn off from exercising (which i have to add. OOPS. i forgot cause after adding dinner and a dessert, i only have 155 calories left so i was bummed..now i have more! LOL.) and how many calories you eat. you can enter in your own food, search for a food, or search by a store brand. They also have restaurants on there too. It's working well for me so far, this is the first time I'm doing this on my own. Right now, I'm given 1167 calories a day. That's calculated by how much you weigh and how much you want to lose a week...so I put it for 2 a week.

550 calories, no way, this would be dangerously low,and harmful to your health.

I track my calories using sparkpeople. I aim for 1400-2000 calories a day, I also use a bodybugg and that helps me figure out how much I burn so I can create a deficit without having to guess my calories burned.

I did WW and it worked really well I just couldn't stick to it because it didn't fit my lifestlye, I prefer to count calories and its free.

Oh and 500 cals a day would be way too low for me

If I only ate 550 calories.....I would be in prison....because I will have killed someone......and probably ate them.

I don't think you will find anyone on here that would recommend going under 1200 calories at the least.

I count calories. I try to stay around 1300 calories a day which is a little low I know. It is the recommended calories if I want to lose 3lbs a week which is a little more than the recommended no more than 2 a week. But I still feel satisfied and I'm eating very healthy nutritious foods, so for now its working for me.

550 calories is impossible. She must not be including certain kinds of foods. It's only a matter of time until she caves because she'll literally be starving. Sorry, no one can live off 6 apples a day.

Honestly, I find even eating 1200 cals too restrictive. I tried it once, for about a month, and didn't lose any weight at all.

Wowww!! 550 is damn there killing yourself. Thats nothing!! I hope you can talk her into doing something else. All she is doing is putting her body into starvation mode and when she eats normal again shes gonna gain all that weight back and more.

I do think 1200 is a little restrictive too and I dont go that low unless Im sick or just not plain ole hungry. I try to stay btween 1300-1700. High end on a hard workout day. I track on thedailyplate.com and changed my weight loss goal to 1 pound a wk and it kicked me up from 1250 to 1550ish. For me the best thing about my weight loss is using some type of tracking system to track my calories and what I put in my mouth

As everyone else said 550 will put you in starvation. Plus you'll gain a fair amount of weight back when you started eating a normal amount again.

I use slim-fast's website for counting calories and eat about 1500 calories a day. I've never used WW but I love slim-fast especially since it works well with my busy schedule and student sized budget (the website is free).

I used to do ww with a lot of success, but after a long break I'm giving calorie counting a shot. I'm aiming for 1400-1600, just started so I'm not sure on how it will work!

i wouldn't bother trying the 550 a day. it's basically impossible to keep up past a week or so.

i try to eat between 900 and 1100 calories a day. i should eat more, and that's why i need to start exercising, so i will "let" myself eat more. (sigh, bad habits die hard, even when you know they never did any good!)

one way to break a plateau is to keep your metabolism "guessing". That is cycle your calorie intake. Like 1200 one day, 1500 the next.

omg, i totally feel te same way! like, since, i too am not exercising, i, for some reason, feel really guilty eating more than about 1000 cals. :[ sometimes i feel like its because when i eat little, i feel better because I am controlling it. does that sound crazy?

it's not crazy! well, it's crazy for me because i KNOW it doesn't work in the long run but i keep doing it. any SUSTAINED weight loss that I had came from working out along with dieting. when i start a diet and tell myself i'll "jumpstart" things by going low-calorie and then up my intake when i start exercising...i invariably DONT start exercising, feel GUILTY about not exercising, and then eating 400-800 calories a day for about a month until i crack and binge. LOL. writing this is god for me, maybe it'll get me to pop in that workout DVD. once i get into a routine i am a workout FIEND...unfortunately this only happens about once every 2 years!