Does ~1600 sound reasonable for a 180lb woman trying to lose weight

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  • gle8442
    gle8442 Posts: 126 Member
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    I am about your age and height and have gone from 190 to 146 in the last six months. I average between 1400-1500 calories/day, my estimated TDEE is 2000, and so far I have been losing about a pound a week. So yes I think 1600/day sounds pretty reasonable, and assuming you are a little more active than me you will probably find you lose about a pound a week without starving for it, which is nice!
  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
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    gle8442 wrote: »
    I am about your age and height and have gone from 190 to 146 in the last six months. I average between 1400-1500 calories/day, my estimated TDEE is 2000, and so far I have been losing about a pound a week. So yes I think 1600/day sounds pretty reasonable, and assuming you are a little more active than me you will probably find you lose about a pound a week without starving for it, which is nice!

    what is TDEE? is the 1400-1500 before your exercise calories? congratulations on the weight loss!!!!!
  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
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    shaythep wrote: »
    When I started earlier this year (January 5th) I weighed 183 lbs. I am 5'3. I started out netting 1700 calories. I weigh all of my foods and I make sure that I pick a reasonable weight loss goal and I pick the right activity level. I am now 169 lbs. I eat about 1600 calories now though.

    ok seriously, what is net? does that mean including workout calories?

    Yes, it includes workout calories. If you eat 1800 calories, but do 300 calories worth of exercise, you net 1500 calories.

    thank you, that's very confusing :/ i GET it but i don't if that makes sense.... soooo let me try the math, that means the poster in this quote would really be eating 1700 calories PLUS workout calories? right?
    Thank you so much for answering this question without judging.

    Yes. She'd be eating more actual calories, but burning some through exercise.


    Thanks!!!!! that makes sense now.
  • gle8442
    gle8442 Posts: 126 Member
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    gle8442 wrote: »
    I am about your age and height and have gone from 190 to 146 in the last six months. I average between 1400-1500 calories/day, my estimated TDEE is 2000, and so far I have been losing about a pound a week. So yes I think 1600/day sounds pretty reasonable, and assuming you are a little more active than me you will probably find you lose about a pound a week without starving for it, which is nice!

    what is TDEE? is the 1400-1500 before your exercise calories? congratulations on the weight loss!!!!!

    No, the 1400-1500 is total calories eaten. I think without exercise I would burn about 1750 calories per day and usually exercise adds approximately 250 more.
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
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    gle8442 wrote: »
    I am about your age and height and have gone from 190 to 146 in the last six months. I average between 1400-1500 calories/day, my estimated TDEE is 2000, and so far I have been losing about a pound a week. So yes I think 1600/day sounds pretty reasonable, and assuming you are a little more active than me you will probably find you lose about a pound a week without starving for it, which is nice!

    what is TDEE? is the 1400-1500 before your exercise calories? congratulations on the weight loss!!!!!

    TDEE is your total daily energy expenditure. It's how many calories your body burns in a day doing its basic job of keeping you alive, plus moving around going throughout your day, plus purposeful exercise.

    There are two ways to calculate a calorie deficit. One is them is called the TDEE method. It's very good for people who get consistent exercise. There are online calculators for this. You can go to one of the sites hosting these calculators, plug in your stats, and your weekly exercise activity and it will give you the figures you need to eat every day to lose weight. Since your exercise is already included in the calculations, you ignore exercise activity from that point onward.

    The other method, the one used by MFP, is called the NEAT method. NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogensis. What that means in plain talk is the amount of calories your body uses keeping you alive plus the amount you use moving around and going throughout your day but NOT including your exercise. On days you do exercise, you add those calories "earned" to your daily caloric intake allowance.

  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
    edited April 2015
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    just found this post! exercise calories since i'm using MFP to calculate my calories then i should eat back the exercise calories. i'm still going to keep my fitbit disconnected for the time being but i'm going to log my step class and my body pump class because i work hard in them :)
  • AnitaCRice
    AnitaCRice Posts: 114 Member
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    I'm 5'6 and weigh around 177 right now. My calorie goal is set at 1450, and I eat all of my exercise calories given to me by my Fitbit which can add up to around 1600 per day fairly often. If I stick to that, I lose pretty easily.

    Honestly, I have a food scale and rarely use it. I use measuring cups, spoons, food scale periodically and eyeball portions sometimes. I don't have a problem when I do that, but I hear that some people do. Maybe I burn more calories than I realize, so it doesn't hinder my weight loss. I don't know.
  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
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    AnitaCRice wrote: »
    I'm 5'6 and weigh around 177 right now. My calorie goal is set at 1450, and I eat all of my exercise calories given to me by my Fitbit which can add up to around 1600 per day fairly often. If I stick to that, I lose pretty easily.

    Honestly, I have a food scale and rarely use it. I use measuring cups, spoons, food scale periodically and eyeball portions sometimes. I don't have a problem when I do that, but I hear that some people do. Maybe I burn more calories than I realize, so it doesn't hinder my weight loss. I don't know.

    i wish i could do that!

  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
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    Meghan, you were already eating your exercise calories and you weren't losing weight.

    Were you accurately logging the whole time or not?
  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
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    Meghan, you were already eating your exercise calories and you weren't losing weight.

    Were you accurately logging the whole time or not?

    i'm about 90% sure i was logging correctly but with everyone saying i must not be it makes me question myself :( . i was eating back my fitbit calories which was at least 200-300 calories a day so i'm cutting that out.

    i just secure messaged my doctor about getting my thyroid tested again.
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    edited April 2015
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    You were weighing EVERYTHING on the food scale? Measuring all caloric liquids? Were you checking that you were selecting the correct data base entries? Verify all of them with either product packaging or the USDA website or nutritiondata.self.com.

    Because the thing is, you should have been losing on your intake, given your stats.
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    edited April 2015
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    Separate post for this.

    Regarding your thyroid.

    Find out from your doctor what the number is, even if he tells you it's fine. There's a range of normal, but within that range... well... I'll tell you my experience as someone with a diagnosed thyroid condition.

    I can be corrected with medication to test within normal range, but still have symptoms. I can test within the high range of normal numbers ... say my bloodwork will come back and give a reading of 2.7. That's normal. I won't feel well with that reading.

    I need my levels corrected down to 1.2 or under to feel best.

    So you might test within normal RANGE but your thyroid can still be out of whack. Ask him to see if you can be screened for antibodies as well. The majority of people with thyroid disease have an autoimmune issue. If that's uncovered, the whole problem will be easier to treat.
  • farfromthetree
    farfromthetree Posts: 982 Member
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    why not eat less arditarose?

    who flagged this?She was asking a question.

  • AnitaCRice
    AnitaCRice Posts: 114 Member
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    AnitaCRice wrote: »
    I'm 5'6 and weigh around 177 right now. My calorie goal is set at 1450, and I eat all of my exercise calories given to me by my Fitbit which can add up to around 1600 per day fairly often. If I stick to that, I lose pretty easily.

    Honestly, I have a food scale and rarely use it. I use measuring cups, spoons, food scale periodically and eyeball portions sometimes. I don't have a problem when I do that, but I hear that some people do. Maybe I burn more calories than I realize, so it doesn't hinder my weight loss. I don't know.

    i wish i could do that!

    I actually could probably have my goal set at around 1600 and eat back some of my exercise calories and still be okay. I purposely set my goal to 1450 so that I have that margin of error...that is probably why I do okay guessing at my intake sometimes. I also don't ever officially add in exercise. I only use what my Fitbit calculates, which can be the same whether I do a high intensity workout or an easy elliptical workout, as long as the number of steps are the same.
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
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    why not eat less arditarose?

    who flagged this?She was asking a question.

    Maybe an accident.
  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
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    You were weighing EVERYTHING on the food scale? Measuring all caloric liquids? Were you checking that you were selecting the correct data base entries? Verify all of them with either product packaging or the USDA website or nutritiondata.self.com.

    Because the thing is, you should have been losing on your intake, given your stats.

    I do weigh everything on the scale or with measuring spoons (for the PB2 etc), i don't drink anything other than water. it looks like i don't measure everything according to my entries (please disregard yesterday it was a *kitten* show), but i put in the number of servings to equal the amount that i weigh out calorically. (ex my yogurt i weigh out in grams but can't find a good by the gram entry so i chose the oz entry and just upped the # of servings until it equalled out to the same amount of calories).
    that's why i'm so frustrated :( from all the stupid calculators i've done online they SAY i should be losing but it's just not happening.
  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
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    why not eat less arditarose?

    who flagged this?She was asking a question.

    not me! i have no idea what arditarose is though...
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
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    why not eat less arditarose?

    who flagged this?She was asking a question.

    not me! i have no idea what arditarose is though...

    It's me...You were asking a question. I think it was before you learned how to use the quote option.

    By the way, weigh your PB2 and such. Those calories are for grams.
  • meghanduprey
    meghanduprey Posts: 158 Member
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    Separate post for this.

    Regarding your thyroid.

    Find out from your doctor what the number is, even if he tells you it's fine. There's a range of normal, but within that range... well... I'll tell you my experience as someone with a diagnosed thyroid condition.

    I can be corrected with medication to test within normal range, but still have symptoms. I can test within the high range of normal numbers ... say my bloodwork will come back and give a reading of 2.7. That's normal. I won't feel well with that reading.

    I need my levels corrected down to 1.2 or under to feel best.

    So you might test within normal RANGE but your thyroid can still be out of whack. Ask him to see if you can be screened for antibodies as well. The majority of people with thyroid disease have an autoimmune issue. If that's uncovered, the whole problem will be easier to treat.

    do you take synthroid or natural thyroid?
    i have heard mixed reviews on this issue (started doing some research).
    i go to the veteran's affairs for my medical so sometimes getting anything other than very basic testing can be a pain in the butt. there are so many of us that they're overwhelmed and they have strict protocols they follow, ie only using certain meds even though others have been found to be more useful. i need as much info as i can to go in there with if i want anything other than the minimum amount of care