Females: How many calories are you eating daily?

brandiuntz

I'm 40, 5'8", 168lbs. I eat 1750 plus exercise calories. So, range is usually 1700-2100 a day. My goal is 0.5lb a week, since I'm only about 15lbs from my goal. Anytime I eat under 1700, I'm hungry and I don't lose weight.

funkycamper

That is easily true for people that have a larger amount of weight to lose, but the closer you get to your goal weight the lower your BMR is, and thus the lower your net has to be in order to lose weight. I'm currently 140, my BMR is something like 1343 and my maintenance (with no extra exercise) is 1710.

We all have to remember that everybody on this site is at a different weight and activity level, so a higher calorie goal might be perfect for weightless for some and yet way too much for others, and a lower calorie goal might seem like starvation to some but is actually necessary for others. It's all about perspective for each person's individual situation.

Yes I agree everyone is different and their are different situations. I just need to correct you one 1 thing.

It is not true in all people that the closer you get to your goal weight the lower your BMR is and therefore the lower your food intake must be to keep losing weight. For people that exercise it is different. You can actually alter your BMR and increase it, by increasing your muscle mass through exercising and just through the actual exercise itself. So that when at rest you are able to burn more calories just to function normally than you would if you wern't an exerciser.

Here is my story. I'm an exerciser. When I started losing weight 18 months ago when I weighed 30 kgs heavier. I actually ate less than I do now. I found that when I had lost around 15 kg and started to exercise more intensly I altered my metabolism. I therefore started to up my calories more and more and kept on losing weight. About 4 or 5 months ago I felt I needed a rest from losing so I ate maintenance calories between 1800 and 2600 gross per day. I still lost heaps of centimetres but little scale weight. Then I decided to lose more cos I plateud out. So now I'm eating between 1800 - 2000 most days and I have found my sweet spot and am losing again. I'm 5 foot 2 and weight 62 kgs but dont look 62 because i have muscle and i'm toned.

So in fact for exercisers its actually the opposite. We especially the vigorous exercisers and even some moderate exercisers need to eat more to fuel our bodies and take need to lose at a lower rate somewhere around 200-300 calorie defecit. This is a nice balance. It helps fuel our exercise maintain our muscle mass, keep healthy (no starvation modes for us) and still be able to lose at a healthy sensible weight. Even when I get down to 60 kg which is my goal weight my next goal will be to lose measurements and body fat %. I wont be focussing on the scale weight as the scale does not taken into account LBM (lean body mass) Doesn't show the full picture.

I'm glad it worked out that way for you. Not sure that it's always going to be so.

Back in my late 20's, the last time I was in super-good shape, I was teaching 6 hours of exercises classes/week (about 1/2 hour was aerobics and the other 1/2 hour was strengthening and stretching exercises, ran for an hour 5-6 days per week, and did weight training 5 times/week (3x upper body, 2x lower body). I was in extremely good shape to the point where people commented on my abs and back muscles, for example. I still had weight to lose, went on Weight Watchers, and gained weight. Yup, about 5# in a month. And, no, this wasn't muscle gains because my back and ab muscles started to get covered up with fat and my already heavy thighs/bum (which is why I still needed to lose) got bigger and all my pants started to feel pretty snug.

In college, I was the only one of my roommates that exercised regularly with an hour of running each morning and I was the only one of us that biked/walked everywhere instead of depending on the bus. I also hit the weight machines a couple of times a week and played racquetball several times a week. Again, my roommates rarely did either. Yet I could never eat as much as they could to the point where they were so worried about my perceived (to them) lack of eating, that they informed my parents about it behind my back once time when the folks came for a visit. My folks weren't the least bit concerned because I had always eaten small amounts, even as a child, so it didn't concern them at all.

In high school, I played sports each season, ran most mornings, and thought nothing of doing 20+ mile bike rides on the weekends. Might even get in a couple of hours on nice weekends playing tennis. This was all on top of riding my bike to school, work, etc., and getting home meant biking up a long, steep hill. I was always amazed at how much my friends could eat, even those that didn't do all these sports and exercising. I would get sick just watching them eat. For example, after football games, when we'd go out for pizza. I'd usually have 1 slice and a salad and be pleasantly full while others easily ate 3-4 slices and topped it off with dessert. And many of them had been snacking all through the game, something I rarely did. I could never figure out where they put it all.

I am exercising regularly now with a wide variety of exercises (running, lap swimming, cardio kickboxing, spinning, weight training, calisthenics, elliptical, biking, etc., as I like to mix it up and not over-train any one muscle group), usually 1-1.5 hours/day, 4-6 days/week, and there is no way I can eat that many calories in a day unless I start eating a lot of junk as I would be so stuffed my stomach would hurt. Not in super-good shape yet but working on it.

So, really, at what magical point does my body all of a sudden start burning mucho calories? How fit do I have to be and how much muscle do I need to pack on to get to that point? I truly wish I could do what you're doing as it sounds very freeing but there has never been a time in my life, no matter how fit or active I have been that I can eat at your calorie level without feeling bloated and gaining fat.

klmnumbers

I've been eating 1200-1400 pretty much with an occasional dip below. I signed up with MFP today, and it's suggesting that I eat 1610. So, I'm going to try to add like one snack type meal to my day to get closer to that number. I find 1200-1400 completely manageable though. Also, I don't eat back calories.

AI1108

I try to eat less than a 1,000, but thats cause I'm pretty tiny and if you wanna lose weigh at my weight you gotta eat less

BethanyAnn14, please eat more. If you're not losing and tiny, that's probably because you're already at an ideal weight. Starving yourself at this point is only going to make you sick.

IIRC from another thread, you're about 5'6 and 129? That's close to where I am. And I can see where some might want to be a little smaller than that... sometimes I want to be a little smaller, but I don't think my skeletal frame will allow it. But at this size, I was losing weight (slowly, like you're supposed to!) netting 1500 calories. I don't know how old you are (I'm hoping you're not 14!) but I'm willing to bet you have a higher metabolism than this 39 year old woman.

I went down that road myself. I thought, "The only way I can lose is to eat very little." It didn't work. I was miserable and disappointed in the results. I felt like a failure because I couldn't lose.

This time around, eating more, I never felt like I was "dieting." I ate normal amounts of normal food, exercised regularly, and the weight literally FELL off. Pretty much the entire time I was losing weight, I averaged about 1800 calories total. That's TWICE as much as I was eating other times when I tried to lose weight.

No I'm 16 and I'm medium framed, but I feel like if I pass 1,000 calories that I have ate to much

BethanyAnn - At 16 years old, your body is still developing and you need to eat more not less. That's why MFP does not allow you on here at such a young age. When I was 16 years old, I was thinking about Junior Prom, the next house party and whether I was going to finish my english paper on time. If its body image issues please speak to your mom or a professional, and get your true TDEE from a nutritionist. 1000 is less than BMR and will not sustain you, on top of which your activity level should not be set to sedentary because you have a lot of activity - PE class, walking from one end of your HS to the other end to get to your next class, if you're in any hs sports, etc. By starting to eat so little at such a young age you're doing more harm than good to your body. Please go speak to a parent/professional you can confide in.

kekl

Around 2300 - 2500 is maintenence for me.
I'm trying to lose some fat so I'm cutting back a bit, to 1800-2000ish.

CMmrsfloyd

BethannyAnn - I'm no expert or anything, but maybe instead of focusing so much on keeping your calories low, you might get the kind of results you want to see by eating a bit more and working out? Is it really that you're concerned with numbers, or do you want to look smaller/more toned? If you want to look tighter, many many people on here find that they get that look better by eating a little more and working their muscles - using weights, doing squats/lunges/etc, pushups, crunches and other ab exercises, etc. if you focus on strengthening your muscles, they hold everything in and give you a nice shape. Being skinny according to the scale is not always going to look great if you don't have healthy, strong muscles firming everything up. When I was in high school I felt awful looking at myself next to a lot of the other people - i wasn't as thin as them and I was flabby, hated physical activity so I didn't have great muscle tone say compared to those that were into sports and other physical activities. I got to a point of being disgusted with myself and started dieting - I lost a lot of weight but still never felt like I looked as good as everyone else b/c even at 105 lbs I was skinny but didn't have the muscle tone shaping everything nicely like a lot of the other people in my classes. I wish I had gotten a clue then and worked more on strengthening my muscles rather than worrying so much about the food. I wasn't counting calories but I was skipping meals and even lying to people so they wouldn't realize how little I was eating. In retrospect I really put myself in an unhealthy situation, I was trying to look better but I wasn't doing it in a healthy way.

If you think about it and decide that what you really want is to look more toned and tighter, eating lots of protein and more calories and working out is really the way to go. I am still in a phase of trying to lose a little more weight now but I'm also starting to workout harder and eating more protein, and I'm starting to see results. My arms and legs already look better and I can feel my abs getting tighter. I stick really, really close to what MFP tells me to do as far as calories are concerned (my goal is 1210 and I also eat back my calories from exercise) and its working really well and I feel better than I have in years. I'm 29. I wish I'd found this site and philosophy a long time ago. If id known in high school that doing this the way MFP suggests can make me look and feel so much better, maybe I wouldn't have to work so hard right now to get to a healthy place. But MFP is I think geared more towards adults that are pretty much done growing/developing, there might be other things that need to be taken into account since you are younger and not done developing yet. MFP might not have all he tools that you specifically need for achieving what you are hoping for.

Anyway, good luck and just think really hard about what it really is that you want. If what you're really looking for is to get into great physical shape and look amazing, there are some awesome people on this site that can really help with workout and nutrition suggestions. But since you are still pretty young and still developing. Please do make sure you are feeding your body the calories and nutrition it needs. I agree with PP, too, that you might be able to get some great insight for yourself specifically by seeing a nutritionist and/or physician about wanting to get in shape. Nothing about diet and exercise is one-size-fits-all, especially when you're still young and growing.

Take care of yourself. :-)

unsuspectingfish

I honestly don't know how anyone could eat all or most of their calories at once. I'm sure it works fine for some people, but I generally feel over-stuffed eating any more than 500 calories in one sitting (depending on the food). My brothers, on the other hand...

I don't actually eat them in one sitting - I'll eat them from 6pm until bedtime, which for me means sometime between 11pm and 1am. And it's possible to get enough cals with calorie dense foods that don't seem to fill me up too much. For example, just 1/4 cup of cashews has 180 cals And I don't find them filling, I can eat a lot more. 1 tbsp of olive oil on my salad has 120 cals. So it's not that hard for me to eat my cals in a shorter period of time.

OK, I can see that being a bit easier to do. I get full a lot more quickly that I used to, I think partly because I do eat regular meals throughout the day.

*if* I eat breakfast I don't tend to eat as much lunch (not as hungry) but then I tend to need like a 3pm-4pm snack. Its normal - our bodies do more or less know how to generally regulate our hunger so we are eating, but our bodies are also inclined to 1) eat extra to store up for later and 2) listen to our conscious minds about what we want, so if we say "I'm miserable and chocolate would make me feel better" than your body is going to accomodate that. Alternately if you tell your body "We can't eat more than this tiny portion" your body will accomodate that too. Most likely be slowing your metabolism down to get closer to your intake.

Oh and I have only eaten 1500 in calories in a single sitting once (since I started tracking but I'm SURE I've done it before). Its um - I mean you feel RIDICULOUSLY UNCOMFORTABLY FULL but its not that hard to do. I had a couple sausages (high in fat = high caloires but low volume) and a couple of pretzel buns (which are brushed in butter = high in fat again) and some potato salad. It was yummy and easy to go that high because of - again - fat content. Fat has twice as many calories per gram as anything else (roughly) so you can basically HALVE the volume of food and get the same caloric content.

Yummy yummy fat...

Yeah, I stopped tracking my fat, because I know I'm consistently over. I don't even eat meat, either.

cofakid

i'm 21, 5'2 and 154lb. I eat 1500 a day. I started july (using another site) eating 1500 a day no exercise and lost 22lb. When i joined mfp it suggested less but i stuck with 1500 because it worked for me. I have only been exercising for the past month. I'm still really struggling to find a balance between eating my exercise calories and not. I'm actually pretty conused as to what works for me as i had a gain one week and loss the next two and last week i went over calories almost every day. But the approach im going to try now is keeping with the 1500 and eating my exercise calories if i need it but not if i dont.

paladeac

I try to eat less than a 1,000, but thats cause I'm pretty tiny and if you wanna lose weigh at my weight you gotta eat less

BethanyAnn14, please eat more. If you're not losing and tiny, that's probably because you're already at an ideal weight. Starving yourself at this point is only going to make you sick.

IIRC from another thread, you're about 5'6 and 129? That's close to where I am. And I can see where some might want to be a little smaller than that... sometimes I want to be a little smaller, but I don't think my skeletal frame will allow it. But at this size, I was losing weight (slowly, like you're supposed to!) netting 1500 calories. I don't know how old you are (I'm hoping you're not 14!) but I'm willing to bet you have a higher metabolism than this 39 year old woman.

I went down that road myself. I thought, "The only way I can lose is to eat very little." It didn't work. I was miserable and disappointed in the results. I felt like a failure because I couldn't lose.

This time around, eating more, I never felt like I was "dieting." I ate normal amounts of normal food, exercised regularly, and the weight literally FELL off. Pretty much the entire time I was losing weight, I averaged about 1800 calories total. That's TWICE as much as I was eating other times when I tried to lose weight.

No I'm 16 and I'm medium framed, but I feel like if I pass 1,000 calories that I have ate to much

BethanyAnn - At 16 years old, your body is still developing and you need to eat more not less. That's why MFP does not allow you on here at such a young age. When I was 16 years old, I was thinking about Junior Prom, the next house party and whether I was going to finish my english paper on time. If its body image issues please speak to your mom or a professional, and get your true TDEE from a nutritionist. 1000 is less than BMR and will not sustain you, on top of which your activity level should not be set to sedentary because you have a lot of activity - PE class, walking from one end of your HS to the other end to get to your next class, if you're in any hs sports, etc. By starting to eat so little at such a young age you're doing more harm than good to your body. Please go speak to a parent/professional you can confide in.

Just quoting to emphasize this. You can really mess up your body going down this road you've started on. Please talk to someone who can help you get a more realistic perspective.

mom2jjl

BUMP

pullipgirl

800 - 1500 calories

littlelily613

I weight a lot right now, but trying to lose 2 pounds a week. MFP gives me 1336 calories a day. Sometimes I am under, but I usually eat a bit more when I exercise. Sometimes I eat back all of my exercise calories, sometimes I don't. I try never to go below 1200 cals and some days I can eat as high as 1800 or even a bit more.

rockerbabyy

i eat about 1850 a day + exercise calories right now. after i get a good average of my exercise calories from my new schedule ill divide it evenly throughout the week and just eat that

StrlJmnz

I do if I'm hungry and it's not to late.

mom2jjl

I'm 41 weigh 211 & est 1000-1200 per day...no I do not est my calories back!

ahinescapron

I am 6 feet tall and currently 222 (GW is 190). My net is set to 1550 or so, but I rarely eat that little. I exercise a lot, so I usually end up eating between 2000 and 2500. I eat back all of my exercise cals and lose about a pound a week.

chaoticxinsane

I float between 1200 and 1600 net. I haven't worked in any exorcising yet (whoo week one), but I intend on eating back at least most of them.

kittenmitton

I'm 5'3", 115 (goal weight between 105-110). I currently average around 850-900 calories/day

dberrien

I am 5'7", age 46 and cas of today 152.5 lbs. I allow myself 1250 calories a day and most days I do not use my calories burned from exercise. I do allow myself some "wiggle room" when out with friends but most days I stick to my daily allowance.

godricshollow

1200 but I exercise daily and always eat back what I burn. I have "faturday" once a week where I eat whatever I want and don't count.

Gee45

Went from 1700 to 1600 to 1500 to 1400 to 1300 with no success. Now I'm usually at 1900 calories five days a week and two days around 1500. I burn around 500 with exercise, five or six days a week. Finally went down 2 lbs and we'll see how it goes at this level. Might end up having to eat more as my work day that is sedentary will now be active.
I don't like to eat less than 1400.

qtiekiki

My goal is 1460 net calories. I eat all my exercise calories.

robot_potato

I'm allowed 1680, I have a hard time eating that much most of the time. I don't go under 1350 and I eat my exercise calories if I am hungry.

DaisyHamilton

18, 5'5", 154 pounds (as of last sunday), and I eat between 850 and 1250 total. Lately I've just been having some deep-eating days, though! I don't usually eat what I've lost, but if I really want an extra something, I'll have it as long as I have the calories or won't be far above my limit.

tesahelena

Hi all! I am 5'5", 31 yo, and weigh 160 lbs. (Down from 172 so far, woo-hoo)! And I'm so confused. So, my daily calorie goal is set at 1310 and I usually eat (intake) about that much, but when I workout I burn between 400-500 and that takes my net down to 800-900. I don't eat back my exercise cals because I feel like it's counter-productive. Am I going about this diet all wrong? My weight has been dropping a steady 2-3 lbs per week. I don't feel that that hungry, tired, or deprived. I do want to do this healthily and so that the weight loss lasts. Any suggestions or advice? Thanks ladies! Good luck to you all too!

ditzyFlip

21yo, 5'0", 114lbs, and I used to have my calorie count set at 1200, but I recently set it to 1000 so I can try to lose more weight. I've pretty much hit a plateau so I need to jump start my body again.

gidgeclev

I am 53, totally post menopausal with a sedentary job and am eating between 800 and 1000 a day following the lighter life lite programme. Don't tell me that this is too little, I do not lose weight easily on anything more and I have only about half a stone to lose before I am in the healthy weight range having lost 2 and 1/2 stone over the previous couple of years and then hit a massive long plateau.

hailzp

I am 6ft, I eat my BMR of 1733 every day. When I workout I eat 2000, if I have a huge workout I will eat a bit more. I am losing more a week now than when I was eating 1500 cals.

snookumss

I don't have a calorie goal. I eat 100 carbs, 60 fats and 125 proteins a day. The calories actually vary a bit. I weigh now 170. When I started at 200 through last month I had a calorie goal of 1600.

thankyou4thevenom

I am currently on 1850 cals. I eat back my exercise calories.