CONFUSED ABOUT HOW TO CALCULATE THE CALORIES i NEED

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

I'm 5'4 also, and was 167 when I started. I thought 1200 seemed pretty low too, but when you start eating better, healthier foods it will become easier- I promise! -18lbs later I'm usually *under* my calorie intake. The more you exercise, the more you can eat. If you burn off 400 cals while working out, it adds 400cals to the amount you have left t eat for the day. Hope this helps

that site is still confusing. Says I need to eat 1900 calories. That's crazy.

1. Enter your current stats including a sedentary lifestyle
2. Make your goal less than 2lbs/week, that's way too much
3. Eat as close to your goal as possible
4. Log your exercise and eat the calories burned back (that's how this program is set up!)

"The Reverse Taper Diet " :

The Theory of Fat Availability:
•There is a set amount of fat that can be released from a fat cell.
•The more fat you have, the more fat can be used as a fuel when dieting.
•The less fat you have, the less fat can be used as a fuel when dieting.
•Towards the end of a transformation, when body fat is extremely low you
may not have enough fat to handle a large caloric deficit anymore.

At the extreme low end, when your body fat cannot ‘keep up’ with the energy deficit
you've imposed on your body, the energy MUST come from SOMEWHERE. This is
when you are at risk of losing lean body mass during dieting (commonly referred to
as ‘starvation mode’). This happens at extremely low levels of body fat, under 6% in
men and 12% in women [Friedl K.E. J Appl Phsiol, 1994].

Oddly enough, it seems as though some obese people have an unbelievable amount of fat available as a fuel, but a lower ability to burn that fat, whereas as they get leaner, they have less and less fat available as a fuel, but a greater and greater ability to burn the fat they do have. So at extreme levels of leanness, it is the fat availability that limits a persons ability to lose fat.

If you have a lot of body fat reserves you would be surprised at how little you can eat (unless you have emotional eating issues or disorders). The leaner you get the less your body has to draw from and then you have to taper up your calories. There is no such thing as starvation mode for women over 12% body fat or men over 6% body fat. I am a living breathing example of that. I went from obese to now under 12% BF and I've maintained for one year and built muscle the whole time. You don't BUILD muscle in starvation mode, so I proved everyone wrong.

Your body loses weight in chunks, not linear. I have found that you can do everything right and your weight loss seems to plateau but you are patient and keep exercising and eating at a deficit (however slight) you will lose it, it will suddenly "whoosh". There are so many variables for the scale though: water retention, digestion, allergies, sodium, carbs, water intake, DOMS, inflammation, the list goes on. People mistakenly think they lose or gain weight when they eat more or less because of these fluctuations

Only you can decide calories, base it on how you feel and what the scale trend is doing, not what anyone here tells you to do. You can always gradually notch your calories up or down by 100 and see how you do. It takes some experimentation to find what works for YOU. What worked for the next person may not work for you just because it did for them. For the most part, if you have fat reserves eating more to lose weight is just plain silly, think about it.

bump

I'm not sure what you mean by "toning". Are you lifting weights? If so, are you gaining strength and endurance from it, or just going through the motions?

I would set your activity level to "sedentary" and go from there. Even if you do an hour of exercise a day, five days a week, that's less than 1/24th of your life, not enough to change your general activity level. Not trying to offend you - I run triathlons and races almost weekly, do lots of outdoor activities, but I'm "sedentary" because I work a desk job a lot like yours. That at least gives me a minimum number of calories to consume per day.