I'm trying to decide whether to change my eating plan a bit, so I'm wondering if I can get some info from y'all. For those of you who count calories, what's your limit/plan? What do you find works? If you're on WW or other plans, do you have an idea what the average number of calories you're eating is?

Angela - I'm using my old WW now and counting points...BUT, the last time I was on a serious diet and lost 40 lbs and kept it off for over a year...I counted calories and fat grams. This was recommended by my Dr. No more than 1500 calories, no more than 40 grams of fat per day. It worked. - Lilion

I was told by my dietician to stay between 1500 - 1800 net calories a day, which still seems a lot to me. Dietclub actually gave me more (around 2000) but I thought that was too much. I also stay below 50g of fat a day (most days!) I usually don't have problems staying below 1800 but sometimes have problems getting to the 1500 ... and when I stay below 1000 (adjusted for exercise) I don't lose weight. A few weeks ago I averaged around 900 cals a day (net) and then didn't lose - upped it to around 1300 cals a day (net) for the next week and lost over 2 lbs in the week. So I finally believe my dietician when she says don't go too low!

I use the dietclub software/website to count my calories, which is good because its Australian based foods. I think Calorie King is the US equivalent. It also has exercise calories as well, and works out the net calories each day. I've lost about 20 lbs since I've been counting calories with it.

Angela--My doctor recommended 1250-1500 cal a day. I use

fitday.com to keep track of my calories. Its free and they have
a journal-exercise-food chart -calendar etc.
I try to stay around 1400 cal a day. sometimes I go over to 1600
but I have been losing an average 1.5 to 2 pounds a week.

I try to keep it under 2000. I really need to work on lowering that tho, to hopefully around 1700. I use nutridiary to track my food, exercise, weight, measurements, etc.

fitday.com is great, I just started using it. I've never watched my calorie intake so this should be interesting. It is 2:30 in the afternoon and I'm up to 1368 calories already. Eeek. I'm going to try to stay under 1800.

Weight Watchers does points. 1 point = 50 cal. Depending on your weight you start out with x # of pts. per day (300 lbs=32 pts. or 1600 cal.) plus 35 pts. to use or not, as you prefer, during the week. At every 25 lbs. you drop 1 or 2 pts.from your daily total. The slow lowering of points is supposed to help keep you from plateauing.

I lost my first 150 pounds by going by 1200 a day, then I had a major plateau. I had really increased my exercise, so I tried cutting calories to 1000 and gained weight. The next week I increased to 1800 and lost 8 pounds. I have settled at 1400 for right now, trying to slowly trick my body to getting back on track. I think it is very individual, and sometimes you just have to listen to your body.
Catherine

Thanks all... I've been about where Loki is, between 1800-2000 / day, and I've averaged about a pound a week so far, but I'd really like to go a *little* faster. When I did this a few years ago, I had read a report by the NIH that recommended calculating your daily need (11 x weight for a sedentary person) then deducting 500 to lose a pound a week. That started me around 2400 and I gradually cut down to about 1750, and I lost about 50 pounds in 6 months. I've been losing this time, too, but when I looked back at my old diet diary and saw how much FASTER I lost last time, I thought, geez, why can't I just do THAT again? You've all given me some food for thought. Thanks!

Angela,

I didn't talk to a dietition, but I heard and idea that worked pretty well when I could stick to it. For about a week I ate normally but I measured all my food and kept track of everything I ate. I looked up the caloric information (There are some great free websites if you do a search for them) and kept track of exactly how many calories I was averaging everyday. The following week I tried to reduce my intake by about 200 calories a day. The next week, another 200 calorie reduction. Unfortunetly I wasn't able to stick with it too much longer and gave into the hunger, but in those 2 weeks I lost 15lbs, which I felt pretty good about and 3 months later I have kept it off.

I'm thinking on going back to that plan but instead to reduce by hundred cal/day/week and reduce less often than every week so that my body can get used to the new caloric intake before reducing it again.

Hope this helps!