Women who need to lose 50+ how many calories do you eat?
Thick_Chickk
Posts: 608 Member
Just wondering for women who have to lose over 50 pounds.. how much do you eat per day? I don't do intensive exercise or anything. I'm trying to focus on my food intake first. Everyone seems tonsay 1200 with little exercise or 1400-1600 with exercise. Should I start off with 1200?
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Coming from someone who has lost 50#, I say heck no. I lose on 190010
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I successfully lost 60 lbs over 6 months with a baseline of 1500. When I exercised, I would eat back about half of my exercise calories.3
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I have lost a little over a hundred pounds eating about 2000 cakes a day.
Autocorrect rewrote CALS as CAKES. I'm leaving it.35 -
I started off the year needing to lose about 75 lbs. I started out netting (i.e. after exercise) about 2200 calories a day, reducing every couple of weeks or so, and am now around 1800 calories a day. I've lost about 30 pounds so far. To be fair, my metabolism is on the higher end of these things, but I doubt that accounts for all that much difference.
ETA: I think 1200 is bonkers and unnecessary and mostly just an excuse to mask sloppy portion control. I think most people who believe they're eating 1200 calories aren't, and the rest are so miserable I wouldn't bet on them sticking it out. But that's just me. I can be opinionated sometimes.10 -
I was 222lbs. Started at 1200 calories with no exercise. Lost 50lbs in 19 weeks. Still eating 1200 a day now with exercise. 22lbs to go to goal.15
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I lost 50+ pounds in a little less than a year at age 59-60, while hypothyroid (treated), most of it eating 1400-1600 plus exercise. (I'm 5'5").I do tend to require more calories than the calculators estimate, though.
Seriously: You haven't told us anything about your current size or daily-life activity level: How would we give sensible advice?
Just set up MFP targeting loss of no more than 1% of your body weight weekly, eat the goal it gives you plus at least half your exercise calories, stick to it for one whole menstrual cycle plus a little (to sort out cycle-based water weight fluctuations), then, after that, adjust based on results.
Use the weight loss process as a chance to learn how to eat in a tasty, satisfying, nutritious way forever, so you maintain your healthy goal weight permanently, and stay off the yo-yo dieting cycle.
No one else's results or choices will tell you what you should do. Calculators - like the one built into MFP - will give you the most accurate possible starting estimate, because they're based on large-group research studies. Then adjust based on your own results.
Oh, and: Read the posts in the "most helpful posts" sections. They're golden.
Wishing you great success!
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Eating too little will lead to weight loss initially, but is not sustainable.
Eat the caloric intake advised by MFP..
All the above posts offer sound advice.
I have 150 pounds to lose.
With 90 down over two years, and also hypothyroidism, and no exercise, my daily caloric intake is 1350.
You need to eat a healthy and nourishing diet, that leaves you feeling satisfied.
At the end of the day, the choice is yours.3 -
I have lost 126 pounds in almost a year. I started off not knowing what to do really but I put my current weight at the time and goal weight with trying to lose 1-2 pounds a week. MFP recommended 1220 calories a day and that's what I've stuck to. Portion control is a must. I weighed and measured my food to try to get as close to accurate as I could. I invested in a scale so I could weigh meat to know how many ounces I was eating but I can pretty much eye it know. Good luck to you! Awesome job so far!2
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I have 80 lbs to loose and have lost 14 lbs 1 month in eating about 1,600 calories/day. I am doing light exercise like walking. Calories add up quick and 1,600 is not a crazy amount.1
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For me, it depends on my exercise routine. I set myself up for 1700, because I usually lose best when I eat between 1650-1750 per day. Exercise creates my deficit. I'm 5'2 over 200lb - but I don't want to starve to death and be miserable, so I prefer to eat what I want within my limits and burn the rest. As I put on more muscle mass, I'll crank up the calorie intake - because I'll be hungry even on 1700!! BTW - I'm over 50...2
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Beautiful__Ending wrote: »
I do exercise (walk, run & lift) and it has been pretty slow. I decided I didn't want to white knuckle it through 1200 and that I needed to make lasting changes to my eating habits. My goal was not to be quick, but rather, permanent.7 -
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I had 50 to go when I started. I'm halfway through now, though I'm on the super slow plan. MFP gives me around 1500 a day to lose 1lb/week, and then I walk 10k steps a day to get another few hundred calories. I seem to function best at around 1800 a day, ie, I don't get hangry.0
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A lot depends on your height. Remember that some women are 5'3", some are 6'3". They will have much different calorie needs.
I like to use this calculator to determine my TDEE: sailrabbit.com/bmr/
Your TDEE is based on your height, weight, gender and activity level. To lose a pound a week, you'd eat 500 fewer calories than your TDEE each day.
My TDEE is 1800, so I would need to eat 1300 calories per day if I wanted to a lose a pound per week.
It's also advised to aim to lose 1% max of your total body weight per week. My current weight is 150lbs, so I could healthfully lose 1.5lbs per week as a maximum.
Hope that helps.5 -
Heather4448 wrote: »I have lost a little over a hundred pounds eating about 2000 cakes a day.
Autocorrect rewrote CALS as CAKES. I'm leaving it.
I think I need to try what ever cakes you are eating
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Beautiful__Ending wrote: »Just wondering for women who have to lose over 50 pounds.. how much do you eat per day? I don't do intensive exercise or anything. I'm trying to focus on my food intake first. Everyone seems tonsay 1200 with little exercise or 1400-1600 with exercise. Should I start off with 1200?
My calories range day to day. I try to fill up on a lot of veges, leafy greens that are low calories. There are some days I sit at 1200ish and others where I go up to 1400. I have a desk job so I put sedentary setting in MFP it gives me 1800 calories with losing .5 pounds a weeks. I have only hit that amount of calories right before my period when chocolate was a main meal for me. I weigh and measure everything. I try to stay away from the starches because I have no will power. I will start slowly bring them back into my diet. I also have a fit bit I wear and depending on my hunger level if I eat back any calories. ( I have loosing right under 2 pounds a week)1 -
Beautiful__Ending wrote: »Thanks everyone. Like I said, I am not exercising right now..I live a pretty sedentary life, that's why I'm a little confused on how many calories to consume..I don't want to be eating too much since I'm not exercising right now, if that makes sense.
I'd recommend starting with whatever MFP recommends for 1 pound a week and eating that for a few weeks. If you're losing weight faster than you'd like and/or are unpleasantly hungry, up the calories. If you feel comfortable cutting back some more, go ahead. A lot of this is guesswork until you have at least a few weeks of personal data to look at.0 -
I determine my calorie allowance by determining my TDEE and subtracting 500. I do this using https://tdeecalculator.net/ and update it with each new pound lost. Since my lowest weight so far is 255 and I'm a 66 y.o. 5'4" sedentary female, I am at present eating 1518 calories/day (TDEE-500). When I hit 254, I'll recalculate.
This may seem like a lot of recalculating but it is working for me because I am "sneaking" down the number of calories by 4 or 5 at a time rather than a big drop. When I started, I was heavier, my TDEE was greater and I was eating over 1600 calories/day. I haven't really noticed the drop because it's sneaking up on me.1 -
Beautiful__Ending wrote: »Thanks everyone. Like I said, I am not exercising right now..I live a pretty sedentary life, that's why I'm a little confused on how many calories to consume..I don't want to be eating too much since I'm not exercising right now, if that makes sense.
There is no single answer to your question. Your calorie goal depends on factors that you have not provided - your stats. And just because you are not exercising doesn't mean your calorie goal should be super low. The more you weigh, the more you can eat while still losing.
However, MFP will set everything up for you. You've joined the site, so why not start off with using its setup and see how it works for you?
Enter your stats, choose one lb/wk loss. Read the stickies. Reading those will help you understand how to log correctly and why it's important to choose a sensible goal. Start there. Listening to all the advice about alternative ways to choose a calorie goal will just add a bunch of options that you don't need when just starting out. Get a basic handle on things, then start tweaking later if necessary.1 -
Remember as you lose weight you will need to lower your calories to continue losing so automatically starting at the absolute minimum (1200) isn't going to be the best plan in the long run. Also it makes absolutely no difference what other people eat. You need to base your calories on YOU - not random people in the universe. Put YOUR information into MFP with a 1lb a week loss goal and see what calories it gives you. Eat that amount plus your exercise calories.1
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I started the year with over 100 to lose MFP gave me 1320 as a target with no exercise. I'm down just about 70 lbs now.1
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I'm starting off (again) at 1200 calories which is what MFP allows me with a sedentary setting. Most of the time I'm pretty sedentary.....over 60, retired, not much exercise and I like seeing quick results in the beginning which motivates me. It is a bit hard to stick to 1200 cals, so I use the award system. If I want to eat a little dessert or extra calories I make myself do some exercise or some other activity like cleaning house, grocery shopping, or yard work, (activities above and beyond sedentary) and eat the extra calories I earn for that. Last time I did this I averaged about 1400 or 1500 calories a day with the "earned ones" which is just about right for me. My net stays about 1200 cals, but I basically eat all I want if I'm motivated to work for it. Previously I lost 20 lbs. in two months and another 10 over the next 2 months which worked for me, but then hit a plateau and quit logging, then quit exercising. Over the next 2 years I put it all back on so here I go again.1
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Personally, MFP has me at 1600 cals to lose 1 lb per week, but I've been at that (plus some bad days) for a little over 10 weeks and have lost 14 pounds...my body was used to eating sooo much that I think even my calculated "maintenance" (which I eat at probably one day a week to give myself breathing room) would still let me lose weight. I do "eat back" my exercise calories if I have any, but if I have a sedentary week then I find I'll of course still drop weight at the cals MFP has for me. Sw: 216 cw: 202, basically, don't be discouraged if you can't exercise!! Use the numbers the app gives you!!0
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Beautiful__Ending wrote: »Thanks everyone. Like I said, I am not exercising right now..I live a pretty sedentary life, that's why I'm a little confused on how many calories to consume..I don't want to be eating too much since I'm not exercising right now, if that makes sense.
The calories you get from MFP presume no exercise. You are supposed to eat exercise calories back.
That said, make time to be active. While it is not necessary for weight loss, you'll be healthier if you do.0 -
My calorie goal is at 1400 and i am steadily losing. It was at 1200 for one month but i just found it to hard to maintain that amount. Even now i eat 4 days at 1400 and 3 days at about 1600.0
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Everyone is going to give you a different answer. Try what works for you. I like to stay between 1200 and 1500 calories. My body tends to release the fat faster at this lower calorie consumption. I think if I'm at 2000 calories, my body will retain current weight. Any more than that, I'm gaining. Everyone's BMR (basal metabolic rate - the metabolic rate when your body is in a resting phase ) is different. So what one needs to have a deficit that leads to fat loss may be different than the next person. But to give you a number, try 1500. That's a little more than the low of end of 1200 but not so much as 2000. You can survive well on 1500 calories and not feel deprived. Log everything. Give it a few weeks to see how the 1500 affects your body. If you need more, bump it to 1800. If less, go down to 1300. Your body will respond accordingly. If it needs more or less, it'll tell you.0
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MegaMooseEsq wrote: »I started off the year needing to lose about 75 lbs. I started out netting (i.e. after exercise) about 2200 calories a day, reducing every couple of weeks or so, and am now around 1800 calories a day. I've lost about 30 pounds so far. To be fair, my metabolism is on the higher end of these things, but I doubt that accounts for all that much difference.
ETA: I think 1200 is bonkers and unnecessary and mostly just an excuse to mask sloppy portion control. I think most people who believe they're eating 1200 calories aren't, and the rest are so miserable I wouldn't bet on them sticking it out. But that's just me. I can be opinionated sometimes.
Just have to say, MFP & on-line calculators estimate I will lose 1 lb a week at 1200. So “bonkers and unnecessary“ is insulting imo. And “an excuse for sloppy portion control” is worse. But you are right about unsustainable, tho, unfortunately. I did 1200 ish (+ an extra protein shake on exercise days) for 6 months and couldn’t take it anymore. I had to bump it up to 1450 this month and probably another before I can face 1200 again. But I don’t lose any weight on 1450 and only lost about 1/3 pound per week on 1200. And no, my portion control isn’t sloppy and yes, I do weigh out everything even the 5 grams of butter or 1 tsp of oil, or 1 oz of nuts, and no I didn’t wreck my metabolism with fad diets, and yes my thyroid is fine according to blood work - and if one does the math, my rate of loss is within 20% margin of error for the expert estimates ...
Sorry to hijack your thread OP, I won’t say anything more on this topic but those types of baseless claims don’t deserve to go unchallenged.
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I stick to around 1600 per day and have a steady 2-3 pound loss per week. I have hypothyroidism and walk a mile a day with hopes to increase my activity now that my knee pain has lessened. But I agree with others that the mfp calculator is a good place to start and you can adjust your goals through some trial and error. I started off at 1200 and wasn't losing so I found it helpful to raise my intake.1
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MegaMooseEsq wrote: »I started off the year needing to lose about 75 lbs. I started out netting (i.e. after exercise) about 2200 calories a day, reducing every couple of weeks or so, and am now around 1800 calories a day. I've lost about 30 pounds so far. To be fair, my metabolism is on the higher end of these things, but I doubt that accounts for all that much difference.
ETA: I think 1200 is bonkers and unnecessary and mostly just an excuse to mask sloppy portion control. I think most people who believe they're eating 1200 calories aren't, and the rest are so miserable I wouldn't bet on them sticking it out. But that's just me. I can be opinionated sometimes.
Just have to say, MFP & on-line calculators estimate I will lose 1 lb a week at 1200. So “bonkers and unnecessary“ is insulting imo. And “an excuse for sloppy portion control” is worse. But you are right about unsustainable, tho, unfortunately. I did 1200 ish (+ an extra protein shake on exercise days) for 6 months and couldn’t take it anymore. I had to bump it up to 1450 this month and probably another before I can face 1200 again. But I don’t lose any weight on 1450 and only lost about 1/3 pound per week on 1200. And no, my portion control isn’t sloppy and yes, I do weigh out everything even the 5 grams of butter or 1 tsp of oil, or 1 oz of nuts, and no I didn’t wreck my metabolism with fad diets, and yes my thyroid is fine according to blood work - and if one does the math, my rate of loss is within 20% margin of error for the expert estimates ...
Sorry to hijack your thread OP, I won’t say anything more on this topic but those types of baseless claims don’t deserve to go unchallenged.
Meh, it's cool. I was being a bit snarky there. I most certainly did not mean to make any statement about you personally, as I don't know you or your life, and there are always exceptions and outliers. My observation could be true for 99.9% of people and still not for you, who knows. There just seems to be a ton of sloppy measuring going on around here, which isn't a moral judgment at all, it's just an observation. When I said "excuse" I meant that a lot of people who think they can only lose weight on "1200 calories" are actually eating more than that and not realizing it. Excuse sounds much more intentional than I meant, so it was a poor choice of words.1
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