Ok, so I used calorie calculators to figure out my maintenance weight, and the lowest one said 2128. So here's how I figured out my limit:

2128 (maintenance) x 7 (days) = 16450
I want to lose 3-4 pounds per week (for now), so 3.5 (pounds) * 3500 (cals/pound) = 12,250 negative calories per week
So I subtract the amount I need to shave off (12,250) from my total maintenance (16,450) to get 4,200 (my weekly caloric intake)
4,200 / 7 = 600 calories per day.

I must be doing something wrong, right? There's no way someone my size needs to eat 600 calories a day to lose 3.5 pounds a week, or is that right??

What REALLY baffles me is that the calculators say to eat between 2100 and 2400 a day for "extreme fat loss." But according to my calculations, that would equal .33 pounds per week. That cannot be their definition of extreme. I'm so confused.

I'm a college student, and my math SAT was nothing to sneeze at, but this whole thing is making me feel really DUMB.

I find the prospect of eating 1200 calories a day to lose 2 pounds a week a VERY disappointing outlook

I felt the same way..so I asked too. You can see the replies from other members on my post:
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/calo...ml#post3218615

I was confused too...I actually found out I wasn't eating enough to lose weight..lol Crazy sounding I know...but I'm working on it. Tomorrow I start doing better at loggin the cals and starting my 30 day shred.

However, 3-4lbs a week is tough.. I thought you were only supposed to aim to lose 1-2lbs a week?

Whatever you decide is working for you..keep us updated

Now you see why changing the eating half to lose 3-4 lbs per week is not realistic.

Your math is right, but underfeeding your body won't help it heal faster. Instead your progress may stall.

Changing the eating part for losing 1-2 is more sustainable. Then when you add in exercise calories burned, you could bump it up to a deficit for 2-3 lbs perhaps depending on your workout effort.

Like on the days you don't work out, you create a minus 500 or 1000 per day. On the days you do work out, you create a minus 1000 or 1500.

It also helps to think of it in terms of calories than lbs. Working hard to lose 3500-7000 calories per week takes hard work.

HTH!
A.

You can't trust the calculators. I've been using them since before they were on the internet and before calculators were cheap and commonplace (weight loss books would give a mathematical forumula, and you'd have to do all the math by hand).

I can tell you that the calculators are often about as accurate as a fake psychic. And they get less and less accurate the more times you've dieted (at least that's been my experience).

You can't guarantee a specific weight loss (without a chainsaw, anyway). You can just pick your calorie level and exercise level and see what happens.

When you get used to dieting like that, it gets a whole lot less stressful - because you know your job, you do it, and what the scale does isn't your responsibility (sure if it's not moving in the right direction, you've got to tweak your food plan, but you may never be able to lose as fast as you'd like to, especially if you're even a little prone to impatience).

Your math is mostly correct (I think you miscalculated your weekly maintenance calories: 2128 (maintenance) x 7 (days) = 14,896 not 16,450). This makes your daily allowed calories even lower!

The problem was hinted at by astrophe. Maintenance calories are what you need to maintain your weight if your body is in a resting state. I find it easier to think about this in terms of daily calorie deficit:

Total calorie deficit to lose 3.5 pounds/week = 12,250 calories/week (as you calculated).
Daily calorie deficit to lose 3.5 pounds/week = 12,250/7 = 1,750 calories.

So if you do no exercise at all, in order to reach this deficit you would need to eat: 2,128 (maintenance calories/day) - 1,750 (deficit calories/day) = 378 calories/day

This is obviously impossible. So you need to increase your daily calorie burn by adding in exercise. Think of it like this:

Calorie Deficit = Calories Burned - Calories Consumed

AND

Calories Burned = Maintenance Calories + Daily Exercise Calories Burned

So:

1750 (calorie deficit) = Calories Burned - Calories Consumed

Now let's assume you want to eat 1200 calories (the minimum you should be eating).

1750 (calories deficit) = Calories Burned - 1200

You need to burn 2950 calories/day.

So, 2950 (Calories Burned/Day) = Maintenance Calories + Daily Exercise Calories Burned.

2950 = 2128 (Maintenance Calories) + Daily Exercise Calories Burned.

Daily Exercise Calories Burned = 822 calories

So to lose 3.5 pounds/week, you need to eat 1200 calories/day and burn 822 calories by exercise.

Likewise, you can eat 1500 calories/day and burn 1122 calories by exercise for the same result (deficit = 1750 calories/day).


Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, weight loss isn't an exact science and you cannot guarantee you will lose a pound for every 3500 calorie deficit you achieve. And on top of that, everyone's body and metabolism is different and calculators are at best just an estimate.

Basically, just pick a number of calories a day to start with. Try that for 3 weeks and see what happens. If you are losing comfortably, great, stay with it. If not, then tweak it a bit (200 calories plus or minus) and see what happens. The first week isn't necessarily going to be a good indicator, so that's why it's important to try for another couple of weeks after that, to get a good sense.

You may have to go through this process several times, to get to your personal sweet spot, where you are losing pretty consistently. And then you may have to do it again, as you lose weight, because that will change things too.

But honestly, losing 2 lbs a week consistently is GREAT, and I think you are setting yourself up for disappointment if you expect to consistently lose a much larger number than that. You may have some great 4 lb weeks, but esp. with TOM issues, you may have some weeks with no loss too. If you can average 2 lbs a week, you'll have lost 100 lbs in a year - wouldn't that be FANTASTIC??

Honestly, at your weight I really think your maintenance calories are wrong.

You should be able to eat WAY MORE then 1200 calories a day to lose weight. Probably closer to your maintenance calories.

At 215 pounds I was eating 1700-2000 calories a day and exercising and losing 2 pounds a week. Everyone is different, but I really think your maintenance calories are low.

Okay, I used one of those calorie calculator sites with your information. I think maybe you mis-understood what it was saying. The calories you see is not your maintenance calories, it is how many calories you should eat to lose 1 pound a week.

This is what I got:

If you reduce your current caloric intake to 2138.7 calories per day you will lose one pound per week without exercise.

It is not going to be 100% correct. But I just wanted to point that out.

Your number for maintenance is 2638.7.

I used this site.

Sorry everyone, but I do not understand these high calorie calculations at all. Even the nutritional labels on food base the calc on a 2000 calorie diet which is often too high for women unless they are active. I am seeing a new trend where the calories are zooming far higher than any nutritional or diet book ever recommended before. In the first diet book based on calorie counting was published during WWI and recommended 1200 for women to lose weight on. I have this book at home and I am on the road right now, so I can't give the correct title, but it was something like Key to the Calories. I believe most of the diet books I have that were published between the 1940's and the 1970's also recommend 1200-1600 calories for most people needing to lose weight. Men's calories were 1600-1800 for weight loss. After the 1970's, diets were based on other ideas that did not involve calorie counting, such as counting carbs, or fat or eating specific types of food. So, somewhere along the line, calories have increased dramatically. I'm certainly confused by it all. So I stick with what I know works for me.

I also know everyone is different and have different needs, but I have always gained weight eating above 1800 calories, whether I was obese or thin. I picked a number based on what I felt I could do comfortably and adjusted after each month as I continue to do as my weight decreases. I think we assume the numbers mean more than they actually do, because the variables are not a part of the formula. Age is a factor, activity levels (which vary daily) are a factor, health is a factor, and certainly one's personal metabolism level is a major factor that these online calculators do not take into their formulas.

Start with a higher number and adjust it until it works for you. Trying to go from a high calorie intake to suddenly a small one will definitely cause reactive overeating and misery. Start with eating maintenance calories in the begining to get use to counting and stabilizing calorie needs and then periodically drop the calorie range bit by bit as you lose weight.

My opinion only and not meant to be the only viable one.

Ok, thanks, everyone.

carlee86, I think you're right about losing 2 lbs per week, but I think since I have SOOO much to lose, I should lose it faster until I'm closer to approaching normalcy.

I would totally understand eating 1200 a day to lose 1-2 a week if I were in the low 200s, but all the way up here I feel like it shouldn't be that difficult. It's not that I'm not willing to eat that few--I totally am. I did 800-900 for a little over a week and am now doing 1200 because I don't want to destroy my metabolism. It's not that I want to eat more, I just thought that eating this much would mean faster weight loss at least in the beginning.

sotypical, that's a good site, and that's closer to what I thought. According to their calculations, I could eat 1142 calories a day and lose 3 pounds a week.

Also, I went back to my original calculator, and I realized that I calculated for my Basal Metabolic Rate.

Things make a little more sense now. I'm going to stick with 1200 for a few weeks and see where it gets me. Thanks again, everyone!

1. Overweight people in the 1940s did not, typically, weigh 300 pounds.

2. In the 70s and 80s, women dieting didn't exercise nearly as effectively--running and strength training were for men and a handful of women who were seen as freaks. 30 minutes of aerobics 3 times a week was more normal.

2. 900-1200 calories a day is the diet our mothers put us on, and what 3 generations found is that it's a great way to lose weight and a crappy way to keep weight off. The famous 95% regain rate was a product of this sort of deprivation philosophy. A diet doesn't work if the weight doesn't stay off.

3. This site is packed with people who have lost steadily at 1500 or so calories a day. It's clearly possible, though it may be somewhat more slowly. (though not that much slowly: there are clearly diminishing returns with calorie counting: I know I lose the same 2.3-2.5 pounds a week at 1500 or 1300 calories) The popular belief (and I think there is some truth to this) is that these non-deprivation diets have a better chance of offering permanent weight loss by segueing so easily into maintainance --as has been said here before, it's a technique that introduces a "new normal".

Paradise, one of the things I found with starting your calories that low is what do you do when you stall? As you loose weight you should reduce your calories. If you start at 1,200 you have no where to go. Just something to think about...

What I want to know is, where did you get that book?! No seriously, I would love to read it or see it somehow!

~CGH~

shantroy, that's a good point. I've been thinking about that. I'm just afraid that if I don't go at it as hard as I can, I'll be discouraged to not see the results. This is certainly not my first diet, and I just can't afford for it not to be my last. I think I'll try to zig-zag between 1200 and 1400 for a few weeks and see where it goes. If I'm losing steadily, maybe I'll increase it a bit and take the immediate cut in pounds loss to make the future easier.

Why don't you try 1800 for 3 weeks? If you lose only one pound/week, you can always cut more, but if you lose 3 pounds/week (which wouldn't be a shock at 300), think of how lovely life will be--3 pounds a week gone and you can eat healthy food all day. It's worth three weeks to find out if that's possible.