What do I do?

LaciePaulin

I genuinely don’t know where to start. I go to the gym, but I’ve heard that I need to be on a calorie deficit. I don’t know how many calories I need to take in though and I don’t always get the chance to make food so it’s even harder for me.

Hobartlemagne

You came to the right place.

First off, you should get the hang of logging your food. Do this about a week then look at everything and take a hard look at your eating habits. Think about multiple little changes that can reduce calories with minimal hassle.
You need to figure out your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)
thats your calorie break-even amount for the day.
Subtract 200-to-500 calories to make your new weight-loss target total.

Know this- it is slow. You can be healthy losing 1 pound a week. Dont try to do this fast.

You cant outrun your mouth. I think of weightloss as 75% food control and 25% exercise
My favorite exercise is an elliptical machine with moving handles. It moves your whole body without a lot of shock or joint strain.

The first 2 weeks, your body may be freaking out, screaming at you for more food. hang it there. You'll adapt and it will get easier.

jeffpopple

Agree with the above. Log your calories and track your weight weekly. Slow and steady wins the race. While exercise is only 25% of the journey, it is key. You will not get the 75% benefit without the 25%. Keep it up and you will be happier and healthier.

AnnPT77

Actually, you don't have to do any math. Not right away, anyway.

If you set up your MFP profile with your demographic information and such, then go through its guided setup for goals, it will give you a calorie goal that takes into account the weight loss rate you put in your profile.

Don't try to lose more than 0.5-1% of your current weight weekly, and for many the lower end is better unless they're severely obese. Yeah, that's math, so if you don't want to do even that much arithmetic, most people will be OK losing a pound (half kilo) per week, unless there's only a few pounds/kilos to lose, in which case go with a half pound/quarter kilo.

Then, log what you eat in your food diary. That can be easier if you made the food so you know all the details, but it can work out if you don't make all your own food and have to be more approximate.

If you included your exercise in your activity level setting, eat on average close to that calorie goal, like maybe +/- 50 calories. You don't have to hit that every day, but try to average around that over a week (and the MFP phone/tablet app can show you weekly averages).

If you didn't include exercise in your activity level, log your exercise (or sync a fitness tracker you wear nearly 24/7), and eat those calories, too.

Follow that for 4-6 weeks, no matter what you see happening on your bodyweight scale. (Bodies are weird, and scales can be lying liars that lie over a short run, when it comes to fat loss. ) If you're female and have menstrual cycles, go for one full cycle, so you can compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles.

If you only had a few pounds/kilos to lose, and went with the slowest loss rate, that can take a little longer to show up for sure on the scale, too. (But there's less health risk if we don't lose too fast for our current size.)

After you've logged consistently for those weeks, you can use your actual average weekly loss to adjust your calorie goal, if what happened is very different from what you intended. That does require math, but it's pretty simple: 500 calories a day is roughly; 1100 calories a day is a kilo a week. If you have to adjust in fractions of pounds/kilos, multiply the right one of those numbers by the fraction, then add/subtract that many calories from your goal depending on whether you're trying to lose faster/slower than in that trial period.

Even if you do the TDEE method in that first reply, still do the trial period. Any of the calculators or even fitness trackers just give us basically the average calories needed by similar people. Individuals can differ from average, and we don't know if we're average or not until after that trial period.

Best wishes!