who would have thought it would work?!!

so how long should you up your claorie intake a couple of days or a week ??? Then go back down to 1200 calories??

This varies from person to person. For me, I can't drop back down. I have to leave my calories at the point where I raised them too or I start to gain weight again. I started at 1700, upped to 1900, then 2000 - at 2000 I maintained my original goal weight of 150lbs from Sept 2010 to May 2011. In May, I upped again to 2200 and lost 5lbs in a week. I'm now eating between 2200-2500 (depending on how active I am that day or how hungry I am) and maintaining 145lbs. Awhile back, I upped to 3000 just to see what happens and got my weight down to 141lbs. I don't like how I feel when I NET 3000 calories, so I went back to 2200-2500 and what do you know? Right back up to 145lbs within a week or so.

@ frenchielover your rmr is your bodies most basic/lowest amount of calories needed to function if you do absolutely nothing so just getting out of bed is going to create a deficit. The more active you are the greater the deficit. Just be aware of your activity because if the deficit is too large it will throw you back into starvation mode and you will need to up your calories again. the post about 20% above sounds right especially if you are an active person

You know, this is one of the best things that I have learnt using MFP - that I don't have to starve myself to lose weight and get healthy.

It just seems too counter-intuitive to eat more to lose weight, but in reality I know that I'm not eating more calories than when I was consuming a family block of chocolate in a day, but I am full up with (mostly) healthier food choices.

I see so many people eating 1200 cals and no extra for exercise, and I just don't know how they survive. I'm really happy that I've learnt that I don't have to do this. I eat 1400 - 1600 net calories a day and keep losing weight!

From what I learned on Fat2FitRadio podcasts the magic number of calories for losing weight is eating at 20% above your BMR. I was really scared to increase mine that high. But I'm surprised that it really worked!

Good for you Ashley! That's awesome!

I am really on the fence here. All along I thought 1200 was MY number and that is what I needed to eat.... if I use the 20% above BMR calculation, I should up my calories to about 1560. But I'm SCARE to do it! In the past 3 weeks since I started, I've lost 6 lbs.... and I don't want to screw it up and gain it back! But..... in the past few days I haven't lost anything, still using the 1200 calories (usually less). Decisions Decisions!!!!

I was afraid to try to up my calories, because I 'might' gain my weight back - but then I thought 5 weeks at a standstill is ridiculous, and if I see a gain, I'll just cut back a little. I'm ready to try anything, I guess

Hi sorry this is so long winded I copied it from a blog I did while at a fitness retreat this a way to find out just how many calories you need a day

I think that I talked about ones resting metabolic rate before, thats the number of calories your body burns just to stay alive. So if you layed in bed for 24 hours and figured the calories you burned doing that . That is your resting metabolic rate(rmr). I am sure most of have heard or will be surprised to hear that you have to eat to lose weight. What I have learned here is that if you don't eat at least your rmr in calories a day your metabolism will slow down to compensate and try to hold on to what you are eating even more.
You lose weight by creating a calorie deficit. So you should eat your rmr calories everyday and be physically active to create that deficit. One might ask can I exercise too much and the answer is yes and that will show up in performance. If you are exercising so much that you start feeling weak or rundown you either need to cut back on the exercise or up your calories. You have to listen to your body and act accordingly.

Now you are probably thinking OK that is all well and good but how do I know what my rmr is. Well it just so happens there are two ways to find this out. You can go to a gym that has a rmr machine and pay 50-100 dollars to be tested or you can use this formula and the results will be very close to the same. Ok figuring this out takes a few steps. First here are a few conversions for you.

Weight in kilograms=weight in lbs divided by 2.2
height in centimeters =height in inches times 2.54

here is the formula.
(9.99 x weight in kilograms) + (6.25 x height in cetimeters) -(4.92 x age in years) + 5 or -161=rmr.
At the end the formula is different depending on your gender if you are male add 5. if you are female subtract 161. Be sure when you calculate this that you do what is in the ( ) first.

Hope it helps