Please help me....In desperate need of expert advice

cqbkaju wrote: »

sunshine12870 wrote: »

I came on here hoping to find out how many calories a woman at 240lbs should be having a day to enable her to lose weight, and as much as I'm grateful for all the advice and have acted upon it.....I didn't get an answer to that question.

Sorry, I do not mean to appear snippy but there is so much lazy thinking and misinformation in this thread that it gets tiresome.

My statements on rationalizing and excuses are warnings to you; DON'T fall into those traps.
You are not a special snowflake.
Everyone faces the same problems when it comes to diet and exercise. It is merely a matter of degrees.
You might need 500 calories a day less than 1 person, but 250 calories more than another person.

The issue is that you are looking for absolutes when it comes to biological processes like diet, TDEE, BMR, exercise and such.

There is no method to come up with an absolute number to lose weight! The person who comes up with it will surely win the Nobel prize.

You must track EVERYTHING you eat so you can adjust your estimates from there.
It comes down to Calories In (CI = what you eat) and Calories Out (CO = metabolic processes AND exercise).
CICO is simple. If your CI is less than your CO then you will lose weight.
If your CI is MORE than your CO you will GAIN weight.
If they are close to even then your weight will stay about the same.

The problem is manifold:
You don't know with a high degree of certainty about how much you are really eating (few people do)
You don't know how much you really need to be eating (few people do)
You are having trouble exercising so your metabolic rate is unpredictable at best.

Several well-meaning people here are giving you encouragement and advice but it is not going to help you as much as educating yourself on proper diet, nutrition and exercise.

All you can do is track everything to determine your CICO requirements and adjust your estimates every 3 weeks or so if you don't see the changes you want.
Weight changes, gaining muscle and the like change your CICO requirements. It is not a static number.

Exercise increases your CO so you will lose "weight" faster".
The more muscle you have, the higher your CO will be.
If you ONLY worry about losing "weight" then you will lose fat AND muscle.
Losing muscle means your CO will be LOWERED and it will be HARDER to lose more "weight" or keep the weight off.

If you are not seeing the changes you want (say the loss of 1 or 2 lbs) after 3 or 4 weeks then your CICO is WRONG.
Adjust it by about 250 calories and adjust it again in another few weeks if necessary.
A realistic LONG-TERM goal is to lose 1 to 2 lbs per week.
The faster you try to "lose weight" the more likely you are to LOSE MUSCLE in the process, especially if you are not lifting weights.

Weight loss is not linear, you must be tracking longer term trends of a few weeks at a time.
Weighing yourself every day does far more harm than good.
Weigh yourself the same day each week, first thing in the morning after you go to the bathroom.

By the way, your "weight" does not really dictate your calorie requirements in the first place.
You need to know your body fat percentage if you want a more accurate estimate of your calorie requirements.
Your calorie requirements at 240 lbs and 50% body fat vs (a hypothetical) 240 lbs and 20% body fat would be different.
Muscle requires extra calories just to maintain it, fat does not.
That is why some people keep telling you that you should exercise, even though several well-meaning people are saying you don't need to. "Need"? Try SHOULD.
If you do not exercise properly then you will lose muscle and your CO will be LOWER.

Again, I recommend "Thinner Leaner Stronger" or something similar to educate yourself properly.