Help New to this

muffintopless94

Hi so I'm new to MFP but I set my calories higher after talking to my doctor. Anyways I'm still a little confused as to how much i should eat. I'm a 5'7 female and weigh 175 pounds. I do get around 10,000 steps a day most days of the week according to the pedometer in my phone and I exercise for 45mins-1 hour a day, 5 days a week. When I exercise I do 45 minutes of cardio, and then 15 minutes of weights about 3x a week. So basically my question is, do I eat 1800 calories a day, 2000, or 2000+? Any help would be very much appreciated, thanks!

Jennbecca33

Hi there, and welcome to EM2WL! So glad you found your way to the forums. We recommend using this site to calculate your needed calories:

http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator/

EM2WL recommends using a 15% deficit for fat loss. Anything more that really creates too large of a calorie deficit and can end up working against your weight loss efforts. Based on your higher level of activity, it looks like you need somewhere around 2300 calories a day for fat loss! It looks like you are doing quite a bit of cardio. One suggestion might be to increase your weight lifting and decrease your cardio. One way you could do this would be to do 3 days of weight lifting and 2 days of shorter cardio in-between your lifting days. That will still give you 5 days of workouts, but you will have longer weight lifting sessions separated by the cardio. The lifting really will give you better results in changing your body shape than the cardio will.

I hope this helps! Please post back with any questions you have! You can add me here in MFP for support as well. Again, welcome!

mymodernbabylon

Hi and welcome. I've used what Jennbecca33 has suggested - she's wise! It works. It's slow and sometimes frustrating but I'm seeing so many more body changes (for the good) even when not losing weight on the scale. Best of luck!