How many calories do I need for weight loss?

Go to www.fitday.com, join, answer all the questions and follow the guidelines. It is better if you download a copy and run it on your own system – it isn’t expensive. BTW, those little tins of salmon are a couple of hundred calories each. It won’t take many when added to other food to be over eating. Fitday will tell the total calorie count of everything you eat, but you will need scales to weight things.

You simply need to eat less calories than you burn each day. Put another way, you need to burn more energy than you consume so that the difference doesn’t end up getting stored as fat. If you keep track of what you intake, and what you burn each day, it will tell you which direction you’re going.

You don’t need protein shakes. Protein shakes are for people that want to gain large quantities of muscle. Are you a body builder? If not, drop this, and concentrate on eating a balanced diet.

2 or 3 times a week on a treadmill for only 30 minutes isn’t that much. 4.2 speed on the one I use is a brisk walk. Chances are you are just not getting enough exercise. You need to push yourself harder. No pain no gain. If your muscles aren’t sore the next day, you didn’t do enough. Consider incorporating a weight training regime. Doing a combination of cardio and strength training will help you burn cals more efficiently, tone your body, and reduce the risk of injury.

Consider consulting with a nutritionist and personal trainer who can guide you in what to eat and what exercises you need to be doing from day to day.

Why filtered water? Please see my recent post on this.

Shoe size has nothing to do with fitness, diet, or weight loss, lol.

If you follow the diabetics diet, 2000 calories per day will sustain you, allow you to exercise, lose weight, and still make love to…your partner…or somebody!

There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. If you want to lose weight you have to burn that many calories.

I’m no mathematical genius, and this answer may not help you, but advice: don’t just worry about calorie count, work on proportions too, and keeping your healthy food balanced out and in moderate proportions. :)

I have been trying to eat the correct portions and not to eat until I’m full coz I know it takes about 20 mins for your brain to register to the body that it is full….I know about the you need to burn more then you consume…..lol for the little tins of tuna/salmon I dont eat more then 2 tins a day….filtered water coz that is what is at work and if you lived on the gold coast in australia and drunk the tap water it is like drinking out of a muddy creek it er tastes very organic?.Yuk! I would love to buy an alkaline water filter which makes your water alkaline take all the nasty germs out and puts all the nutrients back in…....shoe size lol I dont know why I put that in there…haha. Protein shakes….it isn’t a muscle building shake its more its more a meal replacement because I don’t eat enough protein as I don’t really like red meat and if I eat cereal and milk it just makes me super hungry. Chicken and fish is alright and I like eggs and try to eat nuts and seeds. thanks for everyones info keep it coming!!!!

Add some weight lifting to build muscle which in turn will burn more calories. Also shake up your treadmill routine do interval workouts fast/slow hard/easy…your body needs to be woken up!

I have a feeling you’re not eating enough calories. I’ve seen this in other people, and I got stuck too. What I’m about to tell you is working for me when I stick to it.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, medical professional, etc. I am a person who is also working on losing weight and can only tell you what I’m doing that is working for me. Your results will vary.

This website has you plug in your current weight and then shows you how many calories to eat each day. It zigzags between a ‘high” number and a “low” number each day. That’s the simple formula. There’s also the complex formula, but there’s no way I would keep it straight each day. When I’ve stayed with this (on the 11 times weight calorie number) I’ve lost about a pound a week. When I’ve added exercise, it has been closer to a pound and a half. I adjust it each week that I lose weight so that I neither overeat nor undereat.

You’ve received some other good advice above. In particular regarding intervals & weight training and making sure the food you eat is healthy.

People don’t always realize that a single parent with a sedentary full time job can’t always squeeze in time for exercise. When you get home your focus is on your children for the next few hours. Get dinner done, homework checked, time to connect, bath and calm down for bedtime and it’s 8 or 9. Once the child is down and you’ve been up since 6.there is no energy for exercise. A half hour on the treadmill will burn 250 calories, you need to burn 3500 cal to lose a lb. Also morning exercise is more beneficial than bedtime because it kickstarts your metabolism instead of keeping you awake.

Better make micro changes in your in activity. Walk up stairs instead of taking the elevator. Park at the far end of the lot or get off the bus one stop earlier. At lunch time walk around the block instead of chatting the whole time with your mates. Take a 10 minute walk with your child as reconnect/how was your day time. If you want to do the treadmill, get up ½ hour early when you won’t have to be dealing with the child.

As far as diet goes do the 500 diet. Eat 500 calorie meals 3 times a day with 100 calorie noshes an hour before dinner & an hour before bedtime. For a woman your size/work you expend abt 2000 cal/day. With micro exercise 250 cal=2250 cal-1700 intake. That works out to 55 lbs by March 1, 2011. Don’t be obssessive abt the scale, once a mo @ the same day/time should keep you honest.

@galileogirl -Great advice :)

It depends on your metabolism and activity level.

Personally, I’d starve on what most people recommend. If I followed @davidbetterman advice at 2000 calories/day, I’d probably drop within three days. Given my fast metabolism, slight hyperactivity, etcetera, I generally burn almost that many calories before lunch! For me, 3000–3500 calories a day (and much of that from soda) allows me to maintain my weight (155lbs/70.5kg, and I am about 2 inches taller than you) since I am… well, me. I’ll bet that if most people tried that, they would swell right up though.

Of course, there is more than calories consumed and burnt to consider when it comes to weight loss. Fat content of what you eat plays a big role too, and about ½ of the calories in salmon come from fat. And if you do the no-carb thing, you might lose weight, but you’ll screw your health up in other ways, making to not really worthwhile.

Calorie counting alone won’t lead to weight loss. The running is a good thing to keep up since getting enough exercise/activity is key to any healthy weight-loss plan, but I would recommend looking beyond the calorie count and keeping track of what you are really eating. Sometimes just a minor, painless diet change will help shed a few pounds/kilos.

I hope helps:

- Use a calorie counter to help track your calories. Once you decide what you need for weight loss, it will be easier not to go over that amount. 2000 cals a day is a very generic idea, and that is not for everyone. I’m a young and active guy, and I am on a program called “LoseIt” (an iPhone application). It told me not to take in more than 1700 calories/day. And when I stick to that, I lose 3 lbs a week.

- Rapid changes in your heart rate help burn fat faster. So rather than 30 minutes on a big incline, try running hard for two minutes, then walking one. Then run hard again, then walk. And keeping your heart beat building and slowing will help.

- STOP the protein shakes and the excess fish/protein, etc. Things with high protein (especially beef/chicken/shakes, but also fish) have more calories than you really need. When I started dieting, I simply started by cutting out chicken and red meat, and I lost 10 lbs in the first month.

Good luck, hope it helps. Like mentioned before, just consume less calories than you burn. And that’s hard to do when you have a desk job! But you CAN do it.

@mrrich724 That might explain something then. I eat very little meat and no fish.

There is a rule that 3500 cals equals a pound. So if you reduce your calories 500 calories a day and increase your exercise a little more you should lose 1 to 2 pounds a week. I think you should figure out how many calories you are consuming by keeping a food diary wth calorie count for a week, be honest with yourself, and then reduce 500 calories a day. That is as long as it is not below 1600 which would be too low for any average sized adult.

If you just had your baby you might consider hormones are screwing around with your weight loss (do you have any hypothyroid symptoms, like hair loss, and very dry skin, hair, and eyes?) If you are breast feeding do not cut the calories as much as 500. Also, remember it took 9 months to put on the weight, give yourself 9 months to get rid of it.

Low glycemic foods are very important. Check the labels. If the sugar content is more than 6g/serving, don’t buy it. Yes, you can exceed sometimes, but 6g/serving is the rule. You would be amazed at the number of low-calorie or diet foods that have high sugar content. I hired a nutritionist to help me and that was her #1 rule. I have been slowly and steadily losing weight for a year now. Another for instance, the types of foods you eat are very important. A baked potato is like eating a bowl of sugar. A sweet potato, on the other hand, burns fat.

eat 1200 calories a day, and you will lose weight.

The best advice I can give you is to keep a food diary. Write down in it everything you eat during the day. Being both an office worker & especially being a parent, I can guarantee you eat more than you think. Once you actually know where youre starting from, you can then do something about it.

The answer is “less than you use.” Knowing how many you use in a typical day takes some work. Start with 1500 and if you don’t start losing weight, drop it to 1200. I would not go below 1000 without talking to a doctor.

@Freedom_Issues Eat 1200 calories a day for more than a week and you’ll keel over unless you’re already childishly small to begin with. As you can see here , that is less calories than a toddler requires.

@thriftymaid If she were considerably shorter, I would agree. However, at 5’10”, she is big enough that she will need more calories than a woman of average height (5’4” last I checked).

Personally, I would ditch the protein shake. Last time I drank those, it was in an attempt to gain weight.

@jerv Hi Jerv. I didn’t read the narrative; just speaking generally. You’re probably right though. My world is full of short people. :)

@thriftymaid The last to get rained on and the first to drown :D Then again, considering how often I hit my head of stuff and have a hard time fitting into many seats designed for “midgets”, I suppose I shouldn’t be picking.

I just reread the original question and you said you eat lots of stir fry. Is that from restaurants? Stir fry has a tremendous amount of fat and calories in restaurants, tremendous. Does the restaurants where you live publish calorie counts?

I dug up my BMR equations 80 X 24 = 1920. So that means that you need around 1920 calories a day to maintain a weight of 80kg if you don’t exercise. Then you look at your exercise, lets say you low activity 1920 X .30 = 576 that times .1 gives us 57. So 1920+576+57=2553. So 2553 calories to maintain your ideal weight, you must be consuming much more than that if you currently are maintaining 95 kilos. I think you need to really count calories so you becomemore aware of what you are consuming. When you count calories you start making better food choices almost automatically.

Hey there thanks for all this info it is great….to JLeslie…my awesome hubby makes the stirfry with fresh vegetables and lean meat or chicken which is cooked with a little bit of olive oil. I did a BMR on a website and it said for me that to maintain my weight I need 2210 calories and then to lose weight take off 500 calories…so that would make it about 1700 something is that right? I was told that was too much that a women should be consuming about 1300 calories so am a little worried. But then I don’t look overly obese as I am so tall compared to someone who was 5ft 3 or 4 who weighed 95 kilo. eeekkk

First calculate your average calories:
209 (your weight) x 10= 2090. Eat that many calories on Sunday. That’s your “average.”

2090 (average calories) + 209 (your weight) = 2299. Eat that many calories on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
2090 (your average) – 209 (your weight) = 1881. Eat that many calories on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

At your weekly weigh-in, see what you’ve lost. Use that number to determine your new average calories. <—Your weight times 10. Plug in the numbers as seen above. Average calories + current weight = M,W,F calories. Average weight – current weight = T,Th,Sat. calories.

That’s a simplified version of the zigzag method I put in my answer earlier. You can do times eight as well, but I would lose my mind on that few calories!

@amazon_77 I am 5’6” and when I eat 1600 calories a day and exercise a half hour 5 days a week, I lose 1–2 pounds a week. You are much taller. I think 1700 is ok, but if you are very hungry I would add a 100 cal snack like a piece of fruit maybe. 1300 is ridiculously low for your height.

I would weigh yourself ever day in the morning either naked, or wearing the same underthings. It will help you stick to your plan every day. There was a study done that people who have kept off a large weight loss for over 5 years, most of them said they weigh themselves every day. Although, there are people who say they have found weighing once a week is preferable. Anyway, if you weigh yourself every day, at the time of your mentruation allow yourself to stay the same weight 3 days before and 3 days after. Most women hold a little extra water, by day 4 you will lose a pound in a day if you are like me.

@tedibear39 with your example shouldn’t you be using her goal weight?

@JLeslie – Nope. You use the weight you’re currently at and move it down each week that you lose weight. I’m not quite sure what you do if you gained weight, because I’ve only lost weight when I’ve stuck to this. Also, if you want to maintain, it’s current weight times 14. I think that’s a little high, personally.

On the weighing thing, I weigh myself every day because it helps me to stay focused. Same time every day, naked, post bathroom visit. (hoping that’s not TMI!)

@tedibear39 Oh, I see, you continue to move it down each week, that makes sense. I think what people forget is that as you lose weight your need for calories goes down to maintain that weight. I think most people think of this as a plateau in weight loss, like the body is doing something different, or adjusting, but I think mostly, it is simply that is the weight you are eating for now.

Also, if people want to maintain their lower weight they have to continue to eat for that weight, they can’t go back to their old ways, because each weight has it’s prescribed calorie intake.

@JLeslie – That’s where I goofed about last year. I had lost a bunch of weight, was closing in on my goal, then decided that I could eat whatever and not track it. 10 pounds came back in under a month. Gah!

@tedibear39 It’s so hard. I have been about 7 pounds more than I want to be for about 5 years, right now I am even 3 pounds above that after travelling, not regularly exercising and eating in restaurants. For me 6 to 7 pounds gets me down into the next size, so right now I am barely fitting in my clothes that are my “fat” clothes. Frustrating. I’m back on track though, started exercising again (just 30 -45 minute “walk”) not enough really, but it is a start, and I do see a difference even with minimal exercise.

Now, what I do remember is what I used to eat when I was young, thin, and fabulous, and it was smaller portions, there is no getting around it. I never would eat two sandwiches at once, which I can do now; I never would have had a quarter pounder with large fries and a coke, and finish the whole thing. I think if someone has been heavy their whole life it is much much harder, because their perception of a “normal” sized meal is very different than a thin person. I don’t know which category you fit into. All of this is just conclusions I have drawn from my own experience, nothing scientific or anything.