calorie maintenance level question!

1242.4 Kcal sounds really low for maintenance calories! :noway:
You must be very small to begin with so I wonder if you should be thinking about losing weight at all unless you're really short.
How tall are you and how much do you weight?

Btw. What is E.D? Google gave me "Erectile Dysfunction" but something tells me, that's not what you mean.. :huh:

Here is a Daily Caloric Expenditure calculator that you can use to estimate your daily burned calories.
http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-burned.php

Don't listen to BMI, first off. That's garbage, it's all about bodyfat percentage and how you FEEL. If you do 500 calories worth of exercise, you have to add the 500 calories to your daily total, not subtract it. I doubt your BMR is below 1200, and since you don't want to go under your BMR in a diet, I recommend you find a calorie calculator.

Find out how many calories are required to maintain your weight (called TDEE), and then subtract 10-20%. No more than that. Scooby has great info, check out the calorie calculator here:

http://www.scoobysworkshop.com/caloriecalculator.htm

Everything gives me a different answer. My own math ( done about 5 times to get this) gave me what I posted. and I got 1660 on that site.

There are two different things here. BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is what you calculated yourself and that's the minimum amount of calories your body burns in a day. That is what you burn if you lie in bed all day long without moving a muscle. If you do anything, your body needs to burn more. That 1660 Kcal/day is what you burn in a normal day and that is the number you need to start from. Reduce 500 Kcal from that and you have what you should eat daily to lose 1lbs/week (which is a very healthy pace).
Losing weight healthily is all about keeping that deficit steady so if you exercise, you'll burn more and will have to compensate for that by eating more. This site makes it very easy to track your eatings and exercise so just input all you eat and make sure you meet the calorie goal the site gives you each day. For you, I think, it will be 1200 Kcal/per day plus your exercise calories.

It will take time to lose the weight but you'll lose pretty steadily and healthily. By the math, you'll be at your goal weight in about 10 months but you'll be pleased about the results long before that.

You should aim to eat at least half of them. Food is essentially fuel and building blocks for our bodies and the more you move the more your body needs both. Eating too little easily leads to all sorts of funky stuff you'd rather avoid.. Ironically, it can even hinder your weight loss.

If you have eaten very little for a long time, eating more can feel uncomfortable in the beginning and you might see temporary weight gain too but both will go away soon as your body adjusts. In any case, you need to eat enough.

Good luck! :drinker:

For you, it looks like a mental thing. Once you control food (as opposed to it controlling you), the guilt will go away. Food is nothing more than fuel to make your body go. Choose the right foods and you won't feel bloated. Do some searching online for the term "calorie dense foods" and you'll find food that have a lot of calories but not a lot of bulk. Which will mean you can eat more calories without filling your stomach and making you feel bloated.

good luck,

-Banks

It's just super confusing. I don't get it ! I mean i am over weight according to my BMI and logic I am 5 feet and weigh 150 lbs, so im not going to go into starvation.. so I exersize to loose aprx minimum 500 cal a day ... aaggh losing weight isn't supposed to be so confusing. It was all so much easier when I just barely ate ( I know horrible, and I am not E.D's are good just easier and the short cut BUT NOT GOOD for any impressionable people.)

The calculator I used for weight loss was this one, which I found to be pretty accurate-
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

-Your maintenance calories are 1,642 if you do little or no exercise (sedentary)
-to lose weight your calories would be 1,314 with little or no exercise. If you do exercise then you'd add calories to this number. (if you exercise three days a week then you'd eat 1,505 for example).