So, I am thinking of becoming a calorie counter -- I've hit a plateau (yet again!) and I want to try to tackle this mathematically this time and figure out how many calories I am taking in and expending each day and what I should be eating and how much, etc. My problem is, rather than eating too much, I seem to be eating too little... I usually hover around 1200 - 1400 calories (based on my trial and error) and that's WITH 5 -6 days a exercise a week). So I went to bmi-calculator.net and plugged in my stats: Female, 24 years old, 5'4", 190 lbs and they told me my BMR is 1669.5. If I understand correctly, that is what my body burns while at rest.
Then I went ahead and plugged in how much I exercise. I couldn't decide between "Very active" and "moderately active" but I finally settled on moderately active and I was given the number 2586.95
So... what am I supposed to do with these two numbers? I understand that 2586 is what I need to eat to maintain my weight, so to have a nice, steady, healthy weight loss, do I need to eat somewhere between the 1669 number and the 2586 number? I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing how those numbers connect to each other. Eating over 2000 calories a day seems excessive to me, but if I eat 2200 calories a day, according to this, i should lose weight?
I'm sorry if I'm being extremely dense, as this is all probably much more simple than I'm making it seem, but I haven't been able to wrap my head around how I'm supposed to use these two numbers to find what I should be eating.
Thank you and I'm sorry for a possibly very stupid post!
ETA: I currently eat 1200 - 1400 calories a day, but I eat til I feel satisfied and I certainly dont feel like I'm starving (though I might be metabolically). Also, I'm trying to keep my carbs low.
The calculators are merely estimates and everyone's body is different. Why not up your calories to 1500-1600 and see what that does for you?
When I was actively losing I never averaged below 1400 and I only walked for exercise a few times a week. At your current weight I believe I was consuming 1600 calories (btw, this was at age 29 and I'm 5'6"-ish.) So it is possible that you can eat a bit more and still lose 1-2 lbs per week. It's possible that you could lose eating 2000 calories, but the rate of loss would be really slow I imagine (which is okay if that's what you are aiming for.)
It's generally suggested that you don't eat below your BMR. So yes, you should pick somewhere between the two numbers (1669 and 2586). I used the same calculator and got 1994 for BMR and with activity I get 3090. They seem reasonable to me as a couple of weeks ago I (on purpose) ate 3000+ for a week with less exercise than normal and did not gain weight. Well, I went up 1.2 pounds immediately, but it came off the day I went back to normal levels. Since I actually dropped my exercise as well that week I'll assume that the 3090 might actually be low for my current level.
I average 2300 calories daily (different levels on exercise, and non exercise days), continue to lose ~2lbs/week, so I must be creating a 1000 cal/day deficit. In the end that's what is important. If you can maintain your weight at 2586 you should be able to lose weight on say 2000, keeping up your activity levels. If it turns out you were off on your activity levels you'll either lose more, or less.
Now, if you're only eating 1200-1400 cals a day I wouldn't suggest suddenly starting to eat 2000.
1 - make sure you are actually eating what you think you are. If you weigh/track all your food then you likely are. Weighing your food (on high cal items) can often be surprising. Packaging for a flatbread I bought last week said 2 pieces = 15 grams = 70 cals. I've weighed 2 pieces at least three times when taking it, not once was it under 20 grams. So if I was counting 70 cals I would be would be off by 23 calories. This isn't a big difference, but too many things and they can add up.
2 - once you're sure about the food, slowly increase your food, maybe a couple of hundred calories for the first week. See what happens. 200 x 7 = 1400 calories, so the worst thing that could happen is that you gain less than half a pound. I suspect you won't though.
3 - evaluate what happened at the end of the week and see what you want to do. If the weight is still stalled, try increasing another 200 cals, etc.
Thanks so much for your replies and congrats on your weight loss!
I think I will do as you suggested and up my calories. Tomorrow, I will start by eating 1600 calories, upping my "high" by ab 200 cals and then I'll take it from there. I might actually try to work up to 1700 to start to see how that will do for me. My goal is steady, uninterrupted weight loss lol; it can be slow if it needs to be, but it just needs to happen lol. I've been 'stuck" at 190-185 lbs for 2 years.
I am very new here and new to the entire calorie counting thing. I kind of fell into it by accident when excersie alone was doing nothing to lose the weight. I didn't know about BMR until I read this board. The cool thing is, when I went to read it sounds like I'm eating in the right range of calories.
I appreciate reading about not eating below those numbers. Now that I'm keeping count, it seems like it wouldn't be hard to cut back several hunderd more calories, but I won't do that. All the reasons not to back tons of sense to me.
Some confusion
