I want to lose 30 pounds by mid/late june.

And, if you ARE tracking all of your calories correctly now, you're malnourished. Increase your intake right away.

I track my calories most days. If I know I am going to go way way over my limit, I don't bother adding it. I track my caloruies by reading the nutritional labels on the food I eat. I do not eat above the serving size so I can enter the calories exactly as it says on the label. If there isn't one I will research the food I am eating and add a 100 extra calories or so to the entry. For example, I often eat chicken. The store I buy it from doesn't put a nutritional label on it so I research how much calories 1 chicken drumstick adds. Most of the things I have read say it's 200 calories. So I enter it as 300 calories. I also try to stay away from things that would be hard to track. Like homemade spaghetti. I add so many things in it, it would take a lot of time for me to add and measure everything out.



I also use my fitness blender videos to workout. They have the minimum and maximum calories burned for all of their workout videos on their site. I do a little more research on how much I should burn at my weight at the activity level the workout is.

I know this isn't the best method, but it's the best I have right now until I can get a food scale, heart monitor, etc.

Thanks for the advice. As for the heart rate monitor, I don't have the money. It's as simple as that. I can't pull the money out of thin air. I am already spending tons of money on gas, prescriptions, driving my son around to find out why he is not talking at 3 years old. My S.O is also paying most of his mother and father's bills a long with our rent, food, and other bills. By the time we have paid everything I have very little money to spend on ourselves.
I already spend about 200 bucks on proper workout clothes and weights. I didn't have any sports bras or gym shoes. Ineeded those. I planned on joining a gym but I don't have the nearly 1000 bucks for that either. As far as the exercise, I am working with what I have.


I am going to try and do better on the food. If look further back most of my meals consisted of one piece of baked chicken about two cups of veggies and usually a half cup of rice or some other side. I had this for dinner almost everyday because I don't know what else to cook when my son is a very picky eater ( He has problems with certain food textures ) and my partner only eats some type of meat can't be baked or grilled ) no veggies, nothing with sauce, etc. His diet basically consist of rice and meat. Everyday. Nothing else. He won't eat anything else. So I have been trying to eat as healthy as possible with those limitations.
I am also cooking for my brother father and grandmother some days ). This is a ton of food to cook. Then add on 3 or four more meas for me as well.

This is one of my main problems as far as meals go.