want to lose 2-3 pounds/ week ?

I am your height and started here at 185 pounds. It took me a year to lose 50 pounds setting MFP at 1 pound per week and exercising 2-4 times per week.

If you want to start more aggressively set it at 1.5 to 2 pounds per week.

im 5'8 and 207 lbs,a dietitian told me i need to consume 1000 calories a day with moderate exercise to loose 3 lbs per week/
heres a link http://www.healthyweightforum.org/eng/calculators/calories-required/ it will tell you how much calories for your weight and height and activity level

thank you (:

Please don't do something so extreme. 1000 calories plus exercise (I'm assuming this means not eating back exercise calories) is unhealthy and not sustainable. A lot of what you lose if you try that long term will be muscle, not just fat.

Set up your profile in MFP with your stats, set your activity to sedentary, and log any exercise you perform on top. This earns you extra calories that you should eat, because your calorie deficit has already been determined by your initial calorie goal. However, the calorie burns calculated by MFP are fairly high - try eating only half of the extra calories you earn from exercise.

3lbs/week loss is likely too aggressive for somebody with your stats. 1.5-2lb/week is more plausible, I think.

edit: I started at 212lbs, 5' 3.5", and I eat 1500 cal per day with some exercise (30 minutes Jillian Michaels or a 30-45 minute jog/walk). I've lost 20lbs in 65 days. You don't need to starve yourself - do something sustainable so that you can keep the weight off long term. I'm actually thinking of increasing my calories to 1600 or so.

edit 2: That link worries me, all the calorie estimates I'm getting are very low - almost always under 1200cal. You should not eat under 1200cal/day net (meaning what you eat minus what you burned exercising should be no lower than 1200).

Hi Moya, I started here only 15 days ago and have already lost 6 lbs. I do not eat breakfast either so it is easy to have a protein shake around 10 am and not be hungry until after 1 pm for me. After that I usually have a really big salad with lots of yummy stuff in it ( the most calories I have charted from one is 415 calories because it had egg, ham, and olives in it). then I have a regular dinner with a protein, vegetables, and a grain. I have never gone over my calorie goal (1330 cal) and I only got hungry one day but had some healthy snacks that got me through. I started out at 250 but didn't start recording here till I was 244. I am now 238 (so I have actually lost a total of 12 lbs sense I started this diet on June 3rd) . I have a hypothyroid problem but it seems to be under control now. Being as big as I am exercise is hard but I am walking a lot and I have more and more energy every day. I encourage you not to starve yourself, make sure you are supplying your body with lots of good healthy (low fat, low carb) food or low calroie, low fat, low carb, meal replacements. The important thing is that you need to build new habits and develop a different attitude toward food in general. You have to look at what it is supplying your body with. You will find you can live without a lot of the food that brought us to this place. Good luck!

As a rule of thumb, the following weekly targets would give a balance between minimizing negative side effects and seeing a reasonable weekly weight loss:

More than 75 lbs: 2 lbs/week
40-75 lbs: 1.5 lbs/week
10-40 lbs: 1 lb/week
Less than 10 lbs: 0.5 lb/week

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants