How many calories should I eat?

GreenTeaRex

I'm a female, 5'9" and currently 143-145lbs. I've lost almost 40lbs since January through healthy eating, calorie cutting, and running 3 days a week. I stopped running in April for various reasons. But now, September I have finally gotten back into exercising. I do the elliptical for 20 minutes 5 days a week. I'm also looking to incorporate a 40 minute workout session to build muscle but we can leave that out of this for now.

I am really confused about the minimum number of calories I can eat. Mainly because I don't know how to calculate my TDEE. Not considering the elliptical I have a pretty sedentary lifestyle. I work at a desk only 5 hours a week and the rest of the time I'm home playing video games, watching tv, doing shopping, cleaning. So I move some but pretty lazy. My BMR is about 1,500 but for my TDEE should I put "little or no exercise" or "exercise 3-5 days a week"? I know if I calculate it using sedentary I could just input my 20 minutes of elliptical into MFP on the days I actually do it to subtract from my net. Is that what I should do?

If I do go with a sedentary lifestyle then my TDEE is just under 1,800 calories. Can I eat below my BMR of 1,500? People keep saying 1,200 is the minimum before you hit starvation mode but I know it's not a standard for everyone. If I ate my BMR of 1,500 calories a day then that's only a 300 daily calorie deficit which is VERY slow weight loss. Even if I subtract the elliptical which is about 250 calories on the days I do it. That's only a 2,850 calorie deficit a week. If I ate 1,200 calories a day I would have a deficit 4,950 calories a week. If I ate 1,400 that's still only a pound a week.

Sorry that this is long and tedious. But please help!

megsmom2

Put your numbers into the MFP program and see what it says. If after a couple of weeks you need to readjust.. do that. Easy.