Advice wanted on exercise routine...healthy?

www.shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com

that should help you find the basic information. in the end, it's up to you to decide what's best for your body, and "what's best" will probably change as you get closer to your goal. but The URL is a good place to start. with gratitude to MFP user Taso42 (cuz due credit must be given).

hope that helps!

Unless I'm dreaming, MFP can and will compute your recommended calorie intake and weight loss amount. Of course, they want you to lose the healthy way--not too fast. There's a good BMI calculator on this site too. From what I know about it, it's pretty accurate. It calculated my BMI close to what my insurance company said. I was obese when I started. I've only lost 10 lbs, so I didn't calculate it again. I may just do that-if I can find the calculator again. Anyway, that will tell you how many calories you should eat, and from the amount of exercise you're doing 1800 doesn't really sound like too much.

I know, I'm replying to myself, but I'm excited! I just did my BMI and I'm only overweight now! My doctor told me 10 lbs. would make a difference.

By the way, the things I told you about are under tools in the toolbar at the top of the page.

And, if you burn 600 calories in your exercise, you should subtract it, so you really are getting only 1200 calories when you do that. I know that's not too much! (Or, in MFP does it in reverse-you should add it on and "eat" your exercise calories). I wouldn't be surprised to find out you're pretty close to right-on with what you're doing-or maybe a little under. Oh, yeah, for it to work, you need to enter your exercise as well as what you eat.

I'm pretty tired right now, so I may have mixed up BMI and BMR in my last post. BMI 'amounts to' a body fat reading. It isn't an actual reading, but merely a guess using your height, weight, and gender. It's expressed in categories. Right now, I'm most familiar with obese and overweight. For some reason I'm having a mental block about what the other two are called. BMR is the # of calories you burn when you're resting-and of course, It's expressed in calories. But MFP does better than that, it calculates the # of calories you should eat in order to lose at a healthy rate, the nutrition in your food and automatically adds extra calories for when you exercise.

I have heard if you sleep more you lose weight. But I would have thought that it would be the other way! I mean, if you're up, aren't you burning more calories. I'm wondering if the article I read wasn't just saying that you would lose weight because you wouldn't be eating if you were asleep??

the sleep thing is basically this: when you sleep, your body is resting and recovering from the day, preparing you for the next. if you don't sleep enough, your body doesn't function the way it should, becomes less efficient, i guess, and weight loss becomes more difficult. i think it has more to do with hormonal imbalances (the word cortisol comes to mind, but i don't feel like googling it right now) and fat deposits than with actual calories burned.

in the end, it's not so much sleeping MORE as sleeping ENOUGH. but that's what fitness is all about in the end - balance.