confused about calorie intake

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fiffee620
fiffee620 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello! I'm 5'2 and weigh in at 86.7 kgs (191. 1 lbs) and I have been using the app and watching what I eat for about 70 days now. Successfully lost 8.7 kgs so far but have a few questions.

My goal weight is 65kgs (143 lbs) and the app puts me at 1, 200 calories a day.

1. Is that reasonable? Reason I ask is that recently I have been getting hungrier and hungrier (haven't binged yet) and figure I must be under eating or something.

Also, I read some where that to arrive at your calorie number, multiply your weight by 33 then to loose weight cut that number by 500. Does anyone know if there's any truth to that?

2. I'm just getting into regular exercise and at this point I'm not even too sure I'm burning calories or if I am how many as I mainly will walk about 3km

Could my not accounting for the exercise affecting my calorie intake level? And how can I correct this?

Thank you

Replies

  • dacpanr
    dacpanr Posts: 7 Member
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    1200 calories is a default. You can actually figure out your calories consumption by googling a calorie calculator or just take your current weight and multiply it by 15 will give you a general calorie at maintenance. Now to lose weight, take 20% of your maintenance calories and that will be your set calorie goal for you to lose weight. Be consistent and have fun. Listen to your body. If you feel hungry it's ok, eat. You're body is adjusting and reset the next day. Hope this helps.
  • dacpanr
    dacpanr Posts: 7 Member
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    Remember your calorie maintenance figure will depend on your height weight and how active you are.
  • fiffee620
    fiffee620 Posts: 2 Member
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    Hey dacpanr thank you so much. And yes, I should listen to my body. I'm trusting that it should get better and easier with time.
  • jacquifrench304
    jacquifrench304 Posts: 131 Member
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    Maybe try setting at .5 kg per week for a slightly higher calorie goal to eat each day. You lose a little slower but you still lose. I am 1" taller than you my starting weight was 74kg and I lost 15kg in 11 months mostly done at 1560 calories a day . Now in maintance at 57 kg
  • dacpanr
    dacpanr Posts: 7 Member
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    jacquifrench304 wrote: »
    Maybe try setting at .5 kg per week for a slightly higher calorie goal to eat each day. You lose a little slower but you still lose. I am 1" taller than you my starting weight was 74kg and I lost 15kg in 11 months mostly done at 1560 calories a day . Now in maintance at 57 kg

    Got a point there. Remember slow and steady wins the race :)
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
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    Have you read the stickied "Most Helpful" threads at the tip of the Getting Started forum section? They will have a lot of the answers you are looking for.

    First, your calorie goal is based off of the stats you enter, how much you want to lose, and what rate of loss you selected. Based on what you provided in your OP you want to lose about 50 lbs, so you should be set to lose 1 lb/week.

    Second, when you do exercise, you are meant to eat back at least a portion of those calories to avoid having too large of a deficit which can result in loss of lean body mass rather than the desired fat loss.

    I also encourage you to log everything as accurately as possible, ideally using a food scale.

    For what it's worth I'm the same height and found 1200 far too restrictive. I lost weight (30 lbs) eating 1600 or more cals/day and am currently maintaining.
  • veganbaum
    veganbaum Posts: 1,865 Member
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    WinoGelato wrote: »
    Have you read the stickied "Most Helpful" threads at the tip of the Getting Started forum section? They will have a lot of the answers you are looking for.

    First, your calorie goal is based off of the stats you enter, how much you want to lose, and what rate of loss you selected. Based on what you provided in your OP you want to lose about 50 lbs, so you should be set to lose 1 lb/week.

    Second, when you do exercise, you are meant to eat back at least a portion of those calories to avoid having too large of a deficit which can result in loss of lean body mass rather than the desired fat loss.

    I also encourage you to log everything as accurately as possible, ideally using a food scale.

    For what it's worth I'm the same height and found 1200 far too restrictive. I lost weight (30 lbs) eating 1600 or more cals/day and am currently maintaining.

    You should take this advice. 1200 is not a default, even though you're short. A 1200 calorie goal is most often the result of a person choosing a goal that's too aggressive. Choose a moderate goal for loss, log accurately, eat back some of your exercise calories, and you'll probably find it all much more sustainable.
  • Mathsrunner
    Mathsrunner Posts: 93 Member
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    I would never go on any quick equation that multiplies your weight by an arbitrary number to calculate maintenance calories, it will definitely not be close to accurate, especially as you move away from the range of weight it was designed for (for instance someone mentioned weight*15 for maintenance, if you wanted to maintain at 200lbs then it would suggest 3000 calories per day which is too high and going further up from here makes it even worse).

    There is a way to calculate your own maintenance calories though, with a few warnings about it. Add up all the calories you have consumed over the last 30 days and then add to that number 3500*weight lost in lbs in the last 30 days. Now you should have a large number which you need to divide by 30. This will give you the average calories you've used every day for the past 30 days, or your maintenance calories. The warnings about this are, since you are losing weight your current maintenance calories will be slightly lower than this figure (should only be out by 50 or less) and it assumes your level of exercise stays at the same effort level as it was in the previous 30 days. Once you have this number you subtract 500 from it for each lb you wish to lose in a week, but don't go too low on your calorie intake as that is just as harmful (if not more so) as overeating.

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