How many calories do I need a day?
 

Hi everyone.

I decided I'm going to do calorie counting for the dieting aspect of losing weight. But I honestly don't know how many calories I need in one day to lose weight. My goal is to get to 200 pounds by September of next year (Or sooner :D).

Any advice? :hug:

Given your weight I'd say you can probably eat up to 2100 calories a day and still lose, but maybe just 2000 a day for now?

Oh wow. I didn't know I could have that many. For the past week I've been taking in about 1600. :stress:

Every single body is different.That being the case, itt's something you're going to have to figure out for yourself through experimentation and trial and error. I think 1600-1800 would be a great place to start. Track your calories really well, sticking faithfully to plan for a few weeks and see what kind of results you wind up with. You can always re-assess.

Yup, I agree. Keep us updated :hug:

As usual, I agree with rockinrobin :). You'll probably end up changing the amount quite a few times through the whole losing weight process.. but 1600-1800 seems like a good place to start!

I started calorie counting at your weight and lost steadily at 2000 calories/day to start. I lowered it as I lost a bit, but ended up losing 100 pounds in 55 weeks.

Really the best thing to do is pick a number, track everything you eat and drink and assess after 2 weeks. If you're losing at a good pace (1/2-1% of your body weight per week) than that's probably a good number for you. When weight loss starts to slow... lower calories a little.

If you feel you are starving then up them a bit- I recommend what Heather says, start at 2000 then work you way down.

Since you are 280 your body needs more calories to function overall- dip too low and your metabolism slows down? So eating 1600 a day may work for a while, but if you are constantly hungry and tired your body will slow down your metabolism to compensate and you'll stop losing. When I was doing 1200 a day I wasn't losing, then I upped it to 1350-1500 a day and started losing again- go figure! Course now I am carb counting so that's different. :)

Good luck- a lot of it is trial and error too.

I would suggest you work on eating around 1800 calories per day, and try to do between 100 and 200 calories worth of exercise per day. That way you will not feel like you are depriving yourself, plus you will be strengthening your body by getting moving. Take a walk...start from 15 minutes, work up from there.

Your goal is possible, but keep in mind a healthy, sustainable weight loss is about 1 to 2 lbs per week, so when the scale isn't moving as quickly as you want, don't be discouraged. You can get there.

Kat