HELP! - Cant figure out how many calories I need to loose weight

johnguitarman
johnguitarman Posts: 56 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi everyone. I am in a dilemma here. I cannot figure out how many calories I should be eating to loose 2 lbs a week. I lost 55 pounds 2 years ago while wearing the Bodymedia armband but I no longer have it. It helped me to determine my daily calorie needs. But now I dont have it anymore so I have been trying to calculate my calories requirements for fat loss but Im at a standstill.

Okay I currently weigh 250. My goal is 190lbs. I'm 42 years old, male, 6'1". I exercise at the gym about 4 days a week. I start with a 20 minute warmup on the treadmill or elliptical and then I hit the weights for about an hour.

I have used online sites to calculate my calories, my Bmi and Tdee and they are all different. For the past 3 weeks I have my calories set at 2640. I have been tracking my weight daily for those 3 weeks to see if there has been any movement but my weight keeps hovering around the 250lb to 252lb mark. I'm getting great workouts in the gym, my diet I feel is adequate but could be cleaned up a bit.

Can someone please help me determine what the proper calorie intake I need to loose 2 lbs a week? Also what is my maintenance calorie intake for reference?

Am I eating at maintenance levels and is that why my weight has barely moved in 3 weeks?

Any help is very much appreciated. Thanks!

John

Replies

  • myfatass78
    myfatass78 Posts: 411 Member
    Just a quick tip. Don't set your goal at 2lbs per week. It is very hard to do and you will be dissapointed when you don't lose that, and end up quitting. Set your goal for a more realistic 1lb.
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
    Why not set up MFP with your stats and see what it says?

    At sedentary and 2lbs/week, with your stats MFP gives a goal of 1610 at sedentary or 1920 at lightly active. I'm not sure what your normal daily activity looks like (other than the gym, I mean), so take a guess at what setting is most appropriate for you.

    Add and eat back some exercise calories on top of that on days you go to the gym. The weights will burn minimal calories, but you'll get some small burns for the 20-minute warm-ups if you log them.

    You may well find the goal of 2lbs/week to be too aggressive for you. That's an 1000-calorie daily deficit, which is a lot. You're tall and big, so you might be able to pull it off, but I suspect you'll be very hungry at 1610 calories. Lower your goal to 1.5 or 1lb/week if you have trouble with the 2.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,961 Member
    If you're maintaining on 2640, you should theoretically lose 2 lbs a week on 1640. Depending on your BF%, that might not be a good choice if you want to preserve as much lean body mass as possible.
  • itsMcKay
    itsMcKay Posts: 131 Member
    myfatass78 wrote: »
    Just a quick tip. Don't set your goal at 2lbs per week. It is very hard to do and you will be dissapointed when you don't lose that, and end up quitting. Set your goal for a more realistic 1lb.

    I completely disagree with this. 2 lbs. is not unrealistic by any means. It takes burning about 1,000 calories per day through diet and exercise. If you eat at a 500-calorie deficit, that means you can do about 45 minutes of cardio to reach your goal. It just takes commitment. I lost 80 lbs. with the 2-lbs./wk. goal and I wasn't even working out regularly. It's a totally reasonable rate of weight loss.

    Just wanted to offer a different perspective.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
    itsMcKay wrote: »
    myfatass78 wrote: »
    Just a quick tip. Don't set your goal at 2lbs per week. It is very hard to do and you will be dissapointed when you don't lose that, and end up quitting. Set your goal for a more realistic 1lb.

    I completely disagree with this. 2 lbs. is not unrealistic by any means. It takes burning about 1,000 calories per day through diet and exercise. If you eat at a 500-calorie deficit, that means you can do about 45 minutes of cardio to reach your goal. It just takes commitment. I lost 80 lbs. with the 2-lbs./wk. goal and I wasn't even working out regularly. It's a totally reasonable rate of weight loss.

    Just wanted to offer a different perspective.

    Until you have less to lose and then you risk burning through more LBM than you need to, so always best to adjust as you get closer and closer to your target weight and slip into maintenance
  • itsMcKay
    itsMcKay Posts: 131 Member
    rabbitjb wrote: »

    Until you have less to lose and then you risk burning through more LBM than you need to, so always best to adjust as you get closer and closer to your target weight and slip into maintenance

    We agree there, for sure.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    I would start with MFP's defaults and adjust as you go. If you want to go with TDEE, start with MFP's NEAT method, then use your actual numbers to calculate the TDEE. Use NEAT for a decent period of time (4-6 weeks is typical) and make sure you are weighing and measuring your food accurately. After that time frame, total all calories eaten, add in amount of weight lost times 3500 calories per pound, and divide bu the number of days included in the calculations. That number would be your TDEE. Subtract 500 calories for each pound per week you want to lose. Adjust as necessary going forward.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    When I was at 250, my goal was set at 1600 and then I would eat additional calories to cancel out calories burned during exercise. My weight loss was about 2 lbs a week.
  • johnguitarman
    johnguitarman Posts: 56 Member
    Thanks for everyones suggestions. I started out and used the MFP suggestions and lost weight for a time but then it stalled. Then I got my Bodymedia and it increased my calories per day and I started losing again but since I dont have the Bodymedia anymore I have been trying to calculate my TDEE and go from there. I was using online calculators and trying to find my actual TDEE but they all seem different. The one I found last night suggests I eat 2372. Im not sure if its accurate but I guess I should try it and see what happens. It said that it incorporates exercise in the calculation so I wouldn't have to eat back any of the calories spent through exercise.
  • Hendrix7
    Hendrix7 Posts: 1,903 Member
    johnguitarman wrote: »
    The one I found last night suggests I eat 2372. Im not sure if its accurate but I guess I should try it and see what happens.

    sometimes thats all you can do , try it and see.

    this is my preferred macro caluclator

    http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/
  • ElJefeChief
    ElJefeChief Posts: 651 Member
    Yeah I'm confused by all of this myself. The right approach (I think) is for me to arrive at a reasonable-looking TDEE without exercise factored in. For me, at six foot three, 223 pounds, with a lightly active job (walk about half the time, desk at the other half), I figure my TDEE is around 2500.

    I've seen good reasoning to suggest that setting a caloric deficit as a proportion of one's TDEE is the best way to go, as it minimizes lean muscle loss (see http://www.acaloriecounter.com/diet/calorie-deficit-to-lose-weight/). So, that means for me, I need to shoot for no more than around a 500 calorie deficit. I've set it at 750 as a "slop" factor because I know the natural tendency is to underestimate calories consumed and overestimate calories burned.
  • missindependent633
    missindependent633 Posts: 5 Member
    You need to work out your bodies BMR (basal metabolic rate) the amount of calories your body burns each day in resting state - typically 3500kcals is equal to 1lb of fat so you should then spread the adequate calorie defecit over the week - This is why it is hard to a achieve a 2lb a week weightloss without extreme diet & exercise, for eg my BMR is 1726kcals per day or 12082kcals per week so to get a weightloss of 2lbs per week i would have to reduce my calorie intake to 5082kcals per week equal to 726kcals per day !! Which is difficult
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
    missindependent633 wrote: »
    You need to work out your bodies BMR (basal metabolic rate) the amount of calories your body burns each day in resting state - typically 3500kcals is equal to 1lb of fat so you should then spread the adequate calorie defecit over the week - This is why it is hard to a achieve a 2lb a week weightloss without extreme diet & exercise, for eg my BMR is 1726kcals per day or 12082kcals per week so to get a weightloss of 2lbs per week i would have to reduce my calorie intake to 5082kcals per week equal to 726kcals per day !! Which is difficult

    BMR has nothing to do with what a good weight loss deficit is. BMR is just the number of calories your body would burn if you were essentially in a coma. The total number you burn is higher than that, because most people aren't in a coma. BMR is a rather meaningless and arbitrary number when it comes to calculations. It's just a component of TDEE. But the body doesn't differentiate between calories burned from BMR and calories burned from daily activity or exercise.

    Better to work out expected TDEE range as an estimate and deduct a reasonable (15-20%) deficit from there.

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