I can't seem to get my head around the idea that I need so many calories! It seems so counterproductive to me to eat more than a tiny amount of calories every day to lose weight. But every website I go to and punch in my height (5'4") my activity level (sedentary) and my goal weight (for kicks I've been putting in 115 as I'm not entirely sure what my goal is yet) it tells me I need between 1400 and 1500 calories to maintain that weight! So logic tells me that in order to become that weight I need to eat like I would to maintain that weight, right? I just can't see losing weight on a 1500 calorie a day diet... Someone help me, how did you manage to come to terms with the idea that eating more is the way to lose?

I just had to keep telling myself the way I was thinking was WRONG and I wasn't going to hurt my body anymore. I learned a lot actually from biggest loser like what happens when you don't eat enough or drink enough water- it's amazing to me what our bodies do to compensate.

It's funny there are days I'm like WOW I'm eating so much! But when I plug it all in on sparkpeople I'm like wow it's just 1300 calories. I'm getting around 1300-1400 a day right now and losing

I guess I'm not sure why you think 1500 is such a high amount of calories. You were eating a lot more to get to 250 lbs, right? How much have you been eating to lose the 35 lbs you've lost so far?

Personally, I use a range of 1200 to 1500 calories, and find it pretty realistic. I'm not going to eat if I'm not hungry, and in all honesty, if I have a day where I'm REALLY hungry, I'll go above 1500 (but only for veggies or fruit).

Huh. Well, I'm eating an average of 1800 calories/day right now, with no day lower than 1650, and I'm losing about 1 to 1.5 pounds per week. Honestly, I'm not interested in dropping my calories as low as humanly possible in order to lose weight, because I feel like complete crap when I do that (depressed, lethargic, unable to work out, irritable, can't sleep, frankly a little insane). I'd much rather find the balance between eating as much as I can and losing weight at a reasonable (for me) rate.

Weight loss isn't a race, it isn't a competition, no one's going to give you a prize for torturing yourself the best and getting there the fastest.

Hmm, well try looking at it from the flipside.

1. The vast majority of overweight people lose weight at a faster rate on say 1400 calories than 1100 calories. It may not make math sense, but our bodies are complex. It just is.

2. If you take #1 as a fact, would you prefer to eat less to lose less, or eat more to lose more? I know I would rather eat more.

I know when I am eating all healthy foods, my personal calorie intake is between 1250-1450 a day. That is to say, this is the range that leaves me satisfied, naturally, without counting calories (as in, the calories would be counted after the day's eating, kwim?) If I ate less than that, I would feel deprived. I am sure you have a natural range, too What is it? Any less than that and you will feel chronically deprived. A person who feels deprived is a person that goes off-plan.

Also, if your body gets used to a low amount like say 1100 now for your current weight, what will happen as you get lighter? Would you have to consume an impossibly low number to keep from gaining? I think in some cases, yes. This would set you up for a re-gain as daily caloric requirement would be too low.

1400-1500 healthy calories is a lot of food, but if it seems like an overwhelming amount of food, make sure you are counting properly: personally, I weight everything, and if I can't count it accurately (like, say, a potluck at work), then I just don't eat it. Do not "guesstimate" portion sizes: people are bad at this, and it's easy to be off 20% (which mean you think you are eating 1400 but it's really 1640).

That said, I've lost 120 lbs at a fast clip and I've averaged well above 1500 calories a day over the course of it: I've tweaked that number as I lost weight and exercised more, but my one brief dip to 1300 did not help me lose weight any faster, and I went back to 1500. Now I eat 1600-1700 and I lose weight at a good clip.

One of the most important things about a healthy number of calories is that you won't require "cheat days". People on VLC (very low calorie--under 1200) diets often, IME, give themselves a "cheat day" as often as once a week--they are too hungry not to. But a 3500 calorie cheat day undoes all the good of those VLC days. If you eat enough healthy calories, you will find, I think, that you can do it day after day after day for weeks and months at a time because you never get more hungry than "Hmmm . . .I could eat". That is what takes the weight off.

I told myself the way I thought things worked was wrong and would only set me back and that I wouldn't see results, would get upset, and most likely burn out faster. At first 1477 calories seemed nowhere NEAR enough, but that's just me and my dyscalculia. Once I realized how much it actually is, I often times find myself with 100-200 even 300 extra calories at night.


I agree with Shmead, don't guesstimate. I do this, and it always backfires. It's difficult sometimes, though, when you just don't have any other options. I've learned that messing one day up ruin you.

Let me see if I can explain myself a bit better... I don't know how much I was eating to get to 250, I assume somewhere around 3500-4000 calories a day. But I didn't track anything or even pay attention, just ate what I wanted when I wanted (well, the first time anyway, the second time I got there by being pregnant!). I have a history of disordered eating so when I was about 17 I decided that in order to be healthy I needed to stop counting calories and bouncing between being underweight and overweight. At one point before that I was 85 lbs and eating about 250 calories a day and purging anything over that, a year before that I had been 175 lbs and stuffing my face with cupcakes and soda.
Anyway, this time around after giving birth to me second baby the first 10lbs dropped off, which was nice. Since then I've been trying to lose weight by counting calories, usually keeping it strictly around 900-1000, which to me seems like a lot of calories to lose weight since when I used to want to lose weight I would keep it around 500 calories (which I KNOW is unhealthy and dangerous and not sustainable in the least). As shmead pointed out, my vlc diet does tend to lend itself to cheat days and falling off the wagon. So I'm looking into healthier and more sustainable ways to do this. Which led me to the websites that I mentioned in my first post which told me that 1500 calories is what I would need to maintain at 115 lbs. Which seems like a butt load of calories, I don't know how to get 1500 calories in during the day while consciously watching what I eat (I could do it if I wasn't watching my weight, that would be super easy). I'm just very turned around and not sure how to convince myself that I need that many calories...

Sorry, this turned out much longer than I originally intended. I appreciate the responses thus far, there are some good ideas and advice here and I really am glad to have this site for support.

Gotcha!

When I have 1500 calorie days I break it into 3 meals. (I don't snack hardly ever because snacking often leads to over-snacking for me). Breakfast is 400 calories, Lunch is 500 and supper is 600.

If you make sure that a couple hundred of each meal is protein the calories add up rather quickly.

I read on here the other day where some girl who claims to weigh 118 pounds (or 108 can't remember) eats up to 3500 calories to maintain her weight. I was impressed to say the least, I'd be around 250 if I ate that much every day. Everyone is different.

I've been there -- I felt like I knew how to eat 900 calories a day and I knew how to eat whatever I wanted, but nothing in between! It turned out, the solution was to learn more. What worked for me was getting lots of diet books from the library and looking through the diet information on 3FC. Eventually, I was able to piece together what a healthy food plan looked like and how to follow it.

Well, mentally, you'll just have to work at believing that it's healthy to eat 1500 calories. I don't think that anyone at 3fc can really help you believe that, esp. with a history of disordered eating. So for that, you may need to see a professional who can help you get to that point.

From a practical level, if you post a sample menu, people will be able to make suggestions of ways to add and tweak so that you are getting the very best nutritional bang for what you do eat. And really, you don't have to force yourself to eat 1500 if that is too much food - you may be better off going more incrementally and starting with 1000 healthy calories and then increase from there as you get more use to eating like that. Sort of the opposite of what most people do in terms of calories but you have to figure out what works for YOU. And fwiw, it's not universally true that eating more means losing more. Every person is different.

I'm not saying you can stay at 1000 forever, because it's really hard to get in all your important nutrients on that amount. And you definitely don't want to get into a starve/pinge pattern, but it's ok to go slowly. Being healthy is the part that really matters, more than how long it takes to lose weight.

I don't know that I would recommend you start at 1,000 because you are already having issues with the amount of calories you should eat. It seems like that might feed your issues rather than showing you another way. If you start at 1,000, are hungry, start eating more, and then experience an initial gain (which happens often when you up your calories), will you be able to deal with that, to wait it out until the weight starts coming off again? Or, will you force yourself to stay at 1,000 until your body slows and accepts the restricted diet? I'm not saying these things will happen. I'm just asking if you can see yourself doing these things. If you can, you should start higher. Well, I think you should start higher, anyway, but especially if you can see yourself behaving this way.

So, yeah, if I were you, I would try 1,500 and see how you do on that. I agree with WarMaiden that you can probably eat more and lose weight, but at least at 1,500 you are giving eating more a real chance. You have already shown yourself to be susceptible to over-restricting, and that can't have been good for your psyche. Why not give the opposite a go this time?

It seems to me that you think of food and eating as "bad": when you are bring "good", you eat as little as possible, until you break down and give in. But food is NOT heroin. Food is good for you. One thing you might do is learn to focus on healthy foods: eating 1500 calories of ice cream is not ok, but 1500 calories of lean meats and veggies is excellent. Focus on making your calories as healthy as you can so that you can feel good about what you eat instead of guilty.

I agree with eating healthy and not so much focus on the number of calories. Perhaps you want to aim for 2 servings of milk or yogurt, 5 servings of vegetables or fruit and 2 properly sized portions of lean meat or fish.