Daily Calorie Intake

krleto
krleto Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm really working on losing these last 12-13 pounds. I work out at the gym 3-4 times a week and burn 300-450 calories each day. I'm a stay at home mom with 1 toddler and 1 school age kiddo. Everything I enter wants me to stay under 1200 calories a day. That's just not working. I'm constantly starving. Any advice on what a healthy daily calorie intake for me would be? I'm not trying to drop 5 pounds a week or anything crazy like that. I want to lose these last few pounds the healthy way and make sure they stay off. Is a 1400 a day calorie intake reasonable with my lifestyle? We eat pretty healthy and I keep my daily carbs at around 125.

Thanks.

Replies

  • AmyRhubarb
    AmyRhubarb Posts: 6,890 Member
    No idea how much you should be eating without knowing your stats.

    Are you eating back your exercise cals or trying to stay at 1200?

    As far as what you're entering to try to get a higher calorie goal, what do you have your weekly loss goal set at? With only 12-13lbs to go, it shouldn't be any more than a half a pound a week....

    Other than tweaking your MFP settings, you could try running your own numbers to find your BMR and TDEE, and take a 10-15% cut from the TDEE number and go from there. Great info in this topic: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/974888-in-place-of-a-road-map-2k13
  • Techmuse
    Techmuse Posts: 7 Member
    As long as you are eating less than what you are burning you will lose weight. Roughly each 3500 calories of deficit will result in the loss of 1 pound of fat, but that will vary based on your diet, body fat percentage, etc. As I mentioned in my own post about this, I am finding that the MFP recommendation is too low a calorie count based on what I actually burn (It was recommending 1600 per day of intake when I consistently burn over 3200 per day). Now I am losing weight fast but I am finding that I don't feel that my body is recovering from workouts well as a result of too low a calorie intake.

    My advice if you can is to get something like the polar loop (and an H7 heart rate monitor if you can for those workouts or something similar.) that will track your calories burned each day (it's been very informative for me as it shows I'm a lot more active than I thought I was). That way you will know each day how many calories you actually burn and can adjust your calorie intake accordingly. If you intake even a few hundred calories less than what you are burningunder you will lose weight over time without starving.

    Hope that helps.
  • krleto
    krleto Posts: 2 Member
    I was just messing with it and realized it was set at 2 pounds per week. I adjusted down to 1 pound pr week and it upped me quite a bit. I'm eating back the calories I lose in exercise. I just can't stand feeling hungry. I either don't sleep well or I find myself scavenging at 10pm looking for something to fill me up.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,261 Member
    Your creating too much of a deficit and/or your setting for your activity is low....anyone with two kids that also works out isn't sedentary.
  • trogalicious
    trogalicious Posts: 4,584 Member
    With a goal loss of 18 lbs, you've put in the wrong information.

    lemme guess, you got to the account setup portion of MFP and decided "I wanna lose 2lbs a week just to be done with it"

    Yeah, it needs to be even lower than that. Set it at .5 lb. Set your activity to lightly active and roll with it.

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