Should I?

In order to lose weight the healthy way, you need to eat the calories mfp gives you. The more you have to lose the more cals. you get. If you eat too few cals. your body will hold on to them. If you exercise you need to eat those too. Slow and steady is the best way. Don't go by what anyone else is doing. Everyone is different. Educate yourself on healthy eating. Look for healthy substitutions for the things you love. Enter foods before you eat them so you can see what it will do to your daily goals, that way you can make changes before you it's too late. Get a food scale so you can see what a true portion looks like. Watch your sodium intake. Drink a lot of water. Try to stay away from processed or fast foods.
Welcome and good luck.

1000 calories is too low, you might end up losing weight (at first), but you will likely put it back on when you start eating properly again, and you will also likely end up malnourished. Stick to what the site says you should aim for.

It is not healthy for ANYONE to eat under 1200 cals a day! Doing so sends your body into starvation mode, which in turns has the opposite effect. Not to mention the fact that you are depriving your body of much needed vitamins and minerals. Eat what MFP recommends for you and exercise at least three days a week of thirty mins a day and you will see a major difference.

Good luck, and unless your mil is a certified nutritionist or trainer I would take her advice with a grain of salt.

Best advice you'll ever get: YOU are not your mil, YOU are not your sil's. YOU are YOU. All 4 of you are at different starting weights/heights/etc and have different goals. Therefore you have different calorie needs for healthy and sustainable weightloss. How did they decide on their 1000 cal/day goals? Was it from the advice of a physician or nutritionist or a site similar to this that actually knows what it's doing? Or did they just think 1000 sounds good for weightloss? B/c they probably shouldn't be going that low w/o some professional supervision. Especially if they are also trying to exercise to get into better shape.

Stick to what MFP has recommended for you. MFP calculated your goal based on YOU and your current stats and goals. Don't feel like you're doing something wrong just b/c your mil and sil's think it's good to be more 'extreme' than what you're doing. You are doing what is right for your body and your goals. Stick with it and you will see results. You may even see BETTER results than what they get since you'll be doing it in a healthy and sustainable way.

Best of luck to you. :-)

Follow MFP, you can also use www.fat2fitradio.com/tools as a reference. Dieters just don't get it, they eat these low amounts of calories and lose weight so they think they are successful. What they don't think about is they have done it before, most likely, and gained the weight back plus more. So clearly it is not effective because it was only short term success. MFP is the way to win the game long term. Stick with MFP and ignore you MIL and SIL's comments, they might come around when they see your results.

Keep in mind it is not just about the number of calories eaten, but the content of those calories too. The body runs much better on whole foods versus highly processed foods. You will see better results too.

Thank you all for replying. Several of you mentioned exercise and I haven't started yet. Not really. Walk away the pounds and I went on vacation and walked ALOT. Other than that nothing. (Hangs head in shame.) I decided to go ahead and make a doctor's appointment mainly to see what my cholesterol and all that is and since I am so overweight to have her clear me before I really start something. I will start walking so I will at least be moving.

Now I just hope she doesn't bring it up again. She was on a medically approved reduced calorie diet after her gastric bypass surgery so I think that is where the recommendation is coming from. I'm not sure if my sil's are going to do this or not because they didn't really comment on it either. They did mention walking and eating healthier but nothing affirmative that they would try to reduce their calories that much.

Thank you all again.

Brenda

Don't hang that head in shame, you are working toward a healthier you and that's all that matters. Walking is a great way to get started - if you want to make it more challenging but not hard on the knees, you can carry small weights with you and get your arms pumping as you go along. Keeping your arms moving a lot during your walk will burn more calories than 'just' walking. I've tested it out with my heartrate monitor and it makes a huge difference even if it's just 1 lb weights (water bottles work great too, they're about 1 lb) and swinging your arms a bit more than you would naturally do. :-)

If your dr. clears you for more vigorous exercise, it might be really fun to start up an exercise routine with some weights and a variety of movements (maybe something really challenging like the 30 day shred - just be sure to take it slow in the beginning even if your dr. said it was okay, b/c it can really kick your butt! LOL) - work at it for a couple of months, really build up your strength and endurance (not to mention it will help you lose inches along with the pounds) and then invite your mil and sil's over to workout with you. Even if you are significantly heavier than them, it will probably be much easier for you b/c you will have been working at it and you will have energy from eating an appropriate amount of calories. Maybe at that point they will see that the way you are doing things is working really really well and will stop hounding you about how you need to do things their way to be successful. :-)

Ah, in-laws. Gotta love 'em. Just smile, thank them for the "advice" and just follow MFP. I would also ask your husband to see if he can politely tell them to go jump in a lake. Good luck.

The amount (1700) sounds right. I am at 1870 but am a little heavier than you. I am still loosing. Dont worry too much about not exercising. For the first week its really good to just keep track of food (unless you want too LOL). Then start intentionally adding exercise in. YOu will see how it works from there im sure!