How many calories should I cut to lose weight?

silacey08
silacey08 Posts: 10 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Good morning My fitness Pals. I am a 33 yo male, 5'5, 270 lbs. I want to lose ALOT of weight! How many calories should i cut to achieve this? I have a desk job.

Replies

  • puffbrat
    puffbrat Posts: 2,806 Member
    Enter your info into this site and follow the calorie recommendation. Give it a few weeks, and evaluate if that is working for you. Remember this is about slow, healthy and sustainable loss. Good luck!

    Here are some threads with great information https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300331/most-helpful-posts-getting-started-must-reads#latest
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    Even if you want to lose a lot of weight, you should still do it in a way that is sustainable long term. There is no such thing as a quick fix. At your weight level, you can safely lose at the 2 pounds per week level that is the maximum MFP allows. Set that as your goal and then enter your stats. My guess is it will come out to a calorie goal of 1500-1600 a day, plus the calories from any exercise you do.
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,464 Member
    If you cut 500 calories a day, you will lose about 1 lb a week.
  • JDSapp4585
    JDSapp4585 Posts: 29 Member
    We are similar I'm height for being male (I'm 5'4"). I've been working off and on this weight loss journey for over 5 years now but have had many periods of stopping then starting up again, that's why I'm still working on it. However I didn't find MFP until August 2017.

    My heaviest was around the 240 range. I managed to drop about 50 pounds on my own within maybe 8 months but then started gaining after emotional stresses.

    When I started with MFP I was around 218 and am down in the 170 range (I haven't weighed in a couple weeks) but I'm also lifting weights about 3x a week. My goal is around 140 but adding muscle will change that some.

    I do have an active job which helps and I can still eat quite a bit especially now that I'm trying to start the slow down phase nearing the end. I would suggest getting something to track your steps to see how many you get daily so you can select the proper activity level on MFP. A Fitbit you can sync to MFP (other devices you can too). If you find that you need to incorporate more steps into your day it wouldn't hurt to start taking walks outside to help. Maybe start with 10 minutes for the first month then add another 5-10 minutes the 2nd months and so on till you get to 30 minutes of daily walking.

    I think you can safely start at a 2-lb weekly weight loss until you get around the 220 range then slow it to 1 or 1.5 lbs.

    I wish you luck in your new Outlook of life. I don't regret mine and I'm not even done yet but I feel so much better already.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,552 Member
    Based on my own experience from a very similar start weight (though I am slightly taller than you at about 172.25cm), I discovered that achieving a 1.5lb a week average loss over the course of my first year on MFP was just about the fastest that I should have pushed. Already at that rate it took me a while to get used to the changes to my body and to truly start preparing for maintenance.

    In fact, the less than 15lbs I lost during years 2 and 3 on MFP were even more helpful in preparing me for maintenance. Before starting on MFP it took me a good 10.5 months to lose about 50lbs because I was trying to do so with un-sustainable deficits that kept back-firing!
  • silacey08
    silacey08 Posts: 10 Member
    THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR HELP!

Categories