Females: How many calories are you eating daily?

tasnim81

I have my daily goal set at 1400 calories but usually eat about 1300. I try to eat back at least most of my exercise calories. Mfp put me at 1270 first, but I changed it because I was feeling tired all the time. Now I feel great and I'm still losing the weight so it works for me at least for now.

lilyinlove

I have upped mine to 1536...I was tired and did not feel like working out on less. I have the NROL4W book that explained the benefits of eating more to lose weight...and I eat my exercise cals back.

HonkyTonks

1200 net is what I aim for but the last few months I have been netting about 800...

micls

I'm 5'7 and 145lbs. I'm currently set to lose 1lb per week, and have about 5lbs to go to my goal.

I'm set at 1300cals for this. Most days I stay fairly close, exercise days I eat at least some of them back, not always all if I'm not hungry. At the weekend I tend to go over a bit (yesterday went over a lot!). Overall I try to look at it weekly rather than daily.

If I 'spend' my calories on the right kinds of foods I'm not hungry at all at this level. My problem is when I spend my calories on non clean food, weekends are especially bad for this. I end up wasting calories that don't fill me up and then end up going over my calories that day so I'm not hungry. I'll go over my calories rather than be hungry.

I'm currently thinking about moving closer to maintenance. As it stands I think I'd struggle going from 1300-1750ish straight out, so might start upping the cals by 50-100 per day each week as I get closer to my goal. That way I can learn healthy ways to eat more rather than going back to wasting the calories on rubbish.

Happy with my progress, but I'm sure this last 5lbs will be the hardest to shift. Learning better habits is the issue for me and it's working so far, but slowly.

FutureMrsAustin

I just follow the nutrition and calorie guide MFP has set up for me based on your current weight, height and weight loss goals. Mine says to eat 1200 a day so I try to keep it around that. But i know that once your body gets used to that after a few weeks you may stop losing weight. If that happens, tweek you calories. Add 200 calories a day for a week and see if that helps.

charlotte3176

I'm 5'8" and weigh 170. My goal is 1400 and I usually eat my exercise calories. If I'm not hungry I don't, but that doesn't usually happen.

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.

stubbysticks

I lost 75 lbs averaging 2,000 calories a day. If I can lose weight eating this much, why would I want to eat less? And since I still have more to go, if I hit a plateau I've got plenty of room to drop my calories by 100-200 to get things going again. I like to EAT...no reason I need to stop doing that just because I want to lose weight.

I've had <1400 calorie days before & I'm not crazy about them, can't imagine how people eat that little every day. But I guess everyone's different.

I don't typically eat back my burned calories which I'm trying to lose. I just spent a week trying to maintain & did eat back my calories, & I can see myself doing that in the future when I go into maintenance for real, but while I'm losing I'm trying to keep things more controlled & consistent.

LorinaLynn

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.

slimkitty

37 years old, 5'5" and currently at 146. I eat between 1500 and 1800 calories daily, so yes I eat my exercise calories.

AmandaR321

1680 right now. I'm 5'10" so my calories don't ever get too low.

Iamfit4life

1720
I am 5'8" and 134. I almost always eat back my calories.

I'd LOVE to lose about 4lbs, but honestly I prefer not getting dizzy and feeling sick.

casi_ann

I had to look back to know how many calories i eat every day. I'm suppose to eat 1700 calories, but when I looked back I found i am really only eating between 1200 to 1600 calories. I was just worried that I wouldn't be able to make it if the calories were as low as 1200.

llkilgore

I'm 48 and in menopause. I try to stay under 1000 calories a day and I don't eat back my exercised calories. I am losing weight, which isn't all that easy during menopause.

I'm 58 years old, 7 years post menopause, and reached my fantasy weight by following MFP's calorie guidelines. Well... more or less. I didn't trust the machines down at the gym enough to eat back more than 2/3rds of the calories reported by them, but I've eaten back 100% of my exercise calories since taking up running about half way through. I lost 55 pounds in all, and while there were slow weeks from time to time, I never hit a plateau. Not one week went by when I didn't lose at least some weight, and most weeks I was on target.

It wasn't fear of "starvation mode" that compelled me to do it that way. I didn't know bupkis about starvation mode when I joined this site last January, but I was aware of the yo-yo weight gain that tends to follow muscle depleting crash diets. I'd seen it happen to other people, including my mom - over and over and over and over. THE VERY LAST THING I wanted to do to my already eroded 57 year old metabolic rate was lose a single ounce of muscle unnecessarily.

MFP does take age into account, by the way. The site calculates a MBR for me that's a full 100 calories below the estimation for an 38 year old female of my height and weight. That may not sound like a lot, but a daily surplus of 100 calorie is more than 10 pounds worth of extra calories over the course of a single year.

tameko2

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...

Lleldiranne

I'm 34 and 5'1/2". Currently 138, working on getting down to 120. My daily intake... 1450 + 500 for exclusively breastfeeding, so 1950. Sometimes I eat back my exercise calories, sometimes I don't. It depends on how I feel. And yes, I'm losing about 1/2 to 1 lb a week.

Kslice39

Im 5'3''
21 years old
cw 180
i eat 1200 cals a day. i dont usually eat back my workout cals

Fitnursejo

Well, im trying to loose 10lbs by Christmas, so im down to 1350 cal/day and i try not to eat the cals credited by exercise. But as a general rule, I think you should calculate your bmr and never eat below that. This prevents muscle metabolism.

karenp84

I try to eat around 1200 calories a day and sometimes i eat back my exercise calories depending on how hungry i am.

SaddyPants

I am 5'9 and right now I'm eating about 1600 calories a day without exercise. But I usually eat back most, if not all, of my exercise calories.