NEED SERIOUS HELP BUT OVERWHELMED

My daily calorie intake as per "my fitness pal " is 2475 . I'm easily holding that and even less on some days . I haven't been exercizing due to a foot issue . I did try riding my bicycle yesterday and found it having low impact on my foot . I want to incorporate bicycling into my exercize program but feel I need more than that for exercize . I need advice here ?

Swimming and walking. Walking especially, It's a very underrated cardio exercise, often forgotten about.

Will using free weights help ? Many years ago I used weights to get in shape . However , being older now , will it help ? Whats a realistic starting point ?

Get yourself a cheap set of dumbells online. They go real cheap on ebay or gumtree. Sometimes even free if you agree to collect.

Start with basic tried and tested exersies like chest presses, overhead/arnold press, flyes and rows. Calf raises and squats for legs. Do two warm up sets (lift light), followed by two heavier sets and then an immediate backoff set (to failure) at the end for each exercise.

*** OK here is another thing that I'm not familiar with . It's eating back the calories that I've exercized off ! I've never heard of it . Can anyone explain that to me so I can understand it ?

Eating back exercise calories is basically ensuring that at the end of the day, you aren't at too much of a caloric deficit. Personally, i'd never think about or mention it again.

Someone told be that if I over dieted that my body would go into a starvation mode . Is this true ? Will it be easy to sabotage my weight loss with this issue .

Starvation mode. lol - lets move on....

The bottom line is , I have to loose this weight . It's causing me to have other health issues and I desperately need to reverse this ASAP .

either eat -300 to -500 calories below your caloric maintenace or burn -300 - 500 calories through exersice. You'll likely win.

Thanks to all for your help .

Anytime.

*** OK here is another thing that I'm not familiar with . It's eating back the calories that I've exercized off ! I've never heard of it . Can anyone explain that to me so I can understand it ?

Eating back your exercise calories is pretty much a MFP thing. When you enter your information when registrating MFP asks you how much weight you want to lose per week. By entering your goal, MFP creates a deficit specific to you & your goal, which means that the kcal you're supposed to eat are already the amount of kcal you should have in total (net calories). So if you work out and burn x kcal, you substract those x kcal from your target amount and create a even bigger deficit. So eating back your kcal makes sure you reach the amount you're supposed to have instead of creating a too deficit that might be too big.

The idea of starvation mode relies on the fact that when you start consuming less your body will start decreasing the amount of energy that it burns - i.e. your metabolism slows down. This is going to happen to some extent whenever you reduce your caloric intake for a longer period of time regardless of how much you reduce it. Generally, the effect is quite small and unnoticeable if you eat -500 calories from what your body consumes each day. People talk about starvation mode to refer to a very dramatic caloric intake cut that then reduces the metabolic rate a lot. That is not something you have to worry about as long as your daily calorie intake is above 1400 or so calories per day.

You will still lose weight and you will be fine. However, for people who have very high BMIs, obese or more (I am obese), it is okay to start dieting off by eating very little calories for a few weeks. I would recommend medical supervision if you were to do this. For an obese person, the body has excess energy to keep itself going even at quite dramatic caloric intake losses.

I would imagine "starvation mode" is not going to be your problem at the amount of calories you are consuming. Also I wouldn't worry about eating exercise calories back - you can do it from time to time as a treat but better not eat them back every day. If you are exercising to lose weight, eating the calories back makes very little sense.

Too many Pandas in this thread.

I would recommend that if you want the right course for you - see a nutritionist. They will be able to tell you what you should be eating and how much. The right kinds of food can help you more than anything else because even if you miss a week of exercise due to injury or you just don't want to do it, you still have to eat and what you eat can make all the difference. Of all the advice I have been given and things I have tried, getting my nutritionist has been the best thing. She told me straight up I would hate her to begin with and then I would love her. Yup, totally true.

*** OK here is another thing that I'm not familiar with . It's eating back the calories that I've exercized off ! I've never heard of it . Can anyone explain that to me so I can understand it ?

There is a school of thought that if you eat too few calories your body will not burn fat, but hold on to it. You may just lose muscle. So if your target is 2500 for your normal day, then without extra exercise just eat 2500 calories. If you burn 1000 extra calories in the day then your body effectively only has 1500 to maintain the usual bodily functions. 2500 - 1000. It is something to consider if it gets very low especially. Someone on here recently said that they eat 1500 and burn 1200 calories, giving their body only 300 to use. This is very low.

I use exercise as a way of getting a treat. Therefore if I burn 800 calories, I am quite happy to have say a pint of beer (insert treat of choice).

If you subscribe to the view that eating too few calories is bad, then eating the equivalent of calories burned is a good idea. Others see it as a chance to speed the process up and don't eat the value of extra calories burned. I am not expert enough (or at all) to say which is correct, but I am trying the former currently. If it works, I will let you know!