It's all about calories in and calories out. We just try to have a deficit each day. We're learning to tweak our food healthier and make our deficits sturdier through exercise. And everyone is welcome!

Hi SUSAN -- I've been wondering where you have been! I asked on the other thread, but nobody had answered it. SO glad to see you back!!!

New month! Let's see how far we can all progress in JULY and report how many pounds we have lost by August 1st! GOOD LUCK to all my fellow Calorie Counters!

Deficit of 240 yesterday. Ate okay, did not work out at all so hence the low number. Lower body still sore from my first BFL-style lower body workout. Will definitely work out today, and maybe tomorrow as well. Haven't decided if I'll try to do weights or wait until Monday to start again. Take care ladies, happy Canada Day and all that!

Michelle--Well thanks for the "wake up" call--DUH-"furgot" it's JULY!!!LOL!!! You'll have to excuse my failure to keep track of this thread. Just seem to be a little slower these days. I have GOT to exercise today. It makes me feel so yucky if I don't. Hopefully I can burn some calories. Going to try to keep track on my Fitday again. Supposed to go out on our motorcycle today but it's going to rain AGAIN off and on today! GAAAHHHH!!! So for now I'm stuck in the house-no excuse not to exercise. Better hurry-company's coming from CT today. Take care. Keepin' the faith...Dawn

Dawn--Don't feel bad; I've done this before also. I'm sorry you're still getting rain; hopefully it will subside very soon!

Can I join in? I'm counting calories and right now, keeping them under 1600. My goal is under 1200 but I'm working on a bingeing problem I have and I'm finding that if I keep it around 1600 or so, I do really well. I've lost 7 so far with a long ways to go yet.
Idrial

Hi everyone. I'm new to 3fc but I've been counting calories since October.

My July is off to a frustrating start. My partner and I went out for brunch with friends today. We'd been planning it for a couple of days and the restaurant sounded really good, so I was looking forward to it. I looked at the menu online in advance and decided what I would have. They had a low fat omelet but it wasn't that interesting to me, so I decided I would have a different choice and would just eat half of it. The omelets came with potatoes and a muffin--I ordered fruit instead of potatoes and skipped the muffin. That all went fine, but the omelet ended up being very disappointing. It was okay but not worth the calories I had to set aside for it. I should have just gotten the low fat omelet--I could have eaten the whole thing and would have known exactly how many calories I was eating, instead of just having to estimate. I guess it was good that I managed to stay within my calorie plan, but I hate wasting perfectly good calories on a so-so meal! Oh well, it was a good lesson I suppose.

Oh, and to top it off, when I skipped the muffin my partner told me I should have ordered it anyway so that he could take it home and eat it! Which I suppose a better person would do but...well, surely someone else here understands why if I couldn't have my muffin I didn't want him to have it either.

The rest of the day went better. We saw the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" which was excellent. Meryl Streep was awesome. Also, I made a great dinner for myself - pasta tossed with veggies and two turkey meatballs. I hardly ever have pasta anymore, so I guess that makes up for the omelet.

- Barbara

P.S. - Welcome Idrial!

Evening everyone. I'm having a perimenopausal night I think. I'm not in the least bit sleepy and I slept very poorly last night. I think my old bode is messed up from vacationing.
For three days now I've been saying "I'll do better tomorrow" .... I'll say it again

Miles great deficit! Keep up the good work!

Idrial welcome to the group. I also aim for 1600 calories a day. It's an atainable number!

Barbara welcome to the group. Don't you hate when you waste your calories on a bad meal! Especially since you planned everything out first!

I had a deficit of 865 today. I did 40 minutes of cardio and 20 minutes weights. Both my gyms are closed tomorrow so maybe I'll do a video.

How do you guys count your deficits? I'm a tad confused on that one! THANKS!

Morning Val! If you ate 1200 calories yesterday but used 2000, you have a deficit of 800.

Not Val... but, how do you know how many you've used? Thanks so much!

Morning ..well I had a good week and i lost 8 of the 10 pounds that I gained from vacation the week before so I'm happy...deficit yesterday was 572....this weeks goal is to drink 64 oz water daily, do at leasst 20 sit ups daily and to post on here daily....I've been busy this week and missed posting alot

It's been raining for the last 3 days and we have 80% today so I don't know how the fireworks are going to go today....hope everyone else has a great 4th

Jamie, hello! Figuring out your usage can be a long and painful process. he luckiest people in the dieting world are the ones who actually tally the calories they eat while they are biggest. I wish I had! But I didn't so I had to figure it out.
I used fitday and was very conservative. I left my activity level very low and was cautious how much exercise I thought I did. After a while, I reassessed and fiddled with fitday. If I had an average deficit of 500 cals a day and lost one pound ... I knew I was counting about right (or right enough that fitday was a valuable tool).
Did that make sense?
There's a couple of ways to guesstimate, just to get started. If you'd like more tips or have more questions ... we'd love to help. Calorie counters are great share-ers