Struggling with calories

Sorry to hear about everything that's happened.

When you set up MFP you set your desired weight loss target, and then MFP creates a deficit based on your weight. It already figures in that deficit, which you can create through your diet alone, no exercise required. When you add exercise, your number of calories goes up. That means you need to eat more to have the same deficit as you would previously. If you have large enough deficits, your body starts using your muscle for fuel. You may lose some weight, but your'e losing lean muscle mass as well as fat.. this means your metabolism slows. 127 is definitely too low but I think you know this already.. do you need to be exercising and burning 600-800 calories a day? I think exercise is good for you, but if you can't eat to keep it up, you might want to cut back and do about 300 calories of exercise a day. Also do some strength training, which burns fewer calories but helps build muscle tissue.

Do you like peanut butter? Peanut butter, or nut butter, butter, olive oil, avocados, nuts are some really good calorie dense foods you could eat. I also try and avoid diet/low fat stuff so I can get my calories up.

You need to stop exercising until you can learn to eat back those calories. I think you should really consult your physician in this matter before proceeding.

What do my net calories need to be? Is there a target number or range?

The general wisdom is that you should always consume at least 1200 calories a day. There is a lot of debate over the net calories, if you use the search function on the forums, you can find more opinions than you'll be able to process. Due to your particular issues, the best approach would be to get a qualified medical opinion.

You need to stop exercising until you can learn to eat back those calories. I think you should really consult your physician in this matter before proceeding.

^^^This!!

My goal is to lose enough weight to have a healthy bmi and to be fit and trim. The actual weight doesn't matter to me much. To get in my target weight range, I need to lose another 30 pounds.

BMI is worthless, forget it. Go off estimated fat %, as accurate as you care to pay for it.

If actual weight really doesn't matter, you could continue the route you are going, and will most likely loose an easy 12lbs of muscle mass, add to that the water that muscle retains, and the glucose, and you may be up around 20 lbs easy.

Or you could take the smart advice that several mentioned and see a Dr. You've got a messed up metabolism, and if you keep burning up to the same number of calories you actually eat, you'll have a several messed up systems in your body.

You need to stop exercising until you can learn to eat back those calories. I think you should really consult your physician in this matter before proceeding.

Agreed. Burning 600-800 calories sounds like a lot of effort. An hour of running is usually in the 500 calorie ballpark. That level of exertion sounds like a lot, especially if you were just recently cleared for exercise. Staying active is important, but perhaps ease into it a bit…250-500 calorie burn would probably be plenty, about 30 min moderate activity daily.

Also, if you still have some active medical issues, you may have an altered metabolic rate (faster or slower) based on your medications, inflammatory processes, hormonal shifts, etc. So MFP calculator is not able to take this into account. So discuss this with your MD in greater detail.

Generally, your net calories should be equivalent to whatever your basal (resting) metabolic rate is--the equivalent of what your body needs for basic functions (breathing, heart beating, blinking, etc.). It is thought that anything less than this will signal food scarcity and cause the body to slow metabolism…you'll still lose weight, but much more slowly as your body tries to be more conservative with the few calories it is getting. The only way to REALLY know this is to have it measured using indirect calorimetry. MFP and other calculators approximate it using equations that account for age, height, weight, and gender. They do not take into account other known contributors such as race/ethnicity, current lean muscle mass, and medically related metabolic issues.

So the calorie deficit is ideally generated from the calories you utilize from your daily energy expenditure to do activities above and beyond rest, such as getting off the sofa, walking around your home/office as well as any structured exercise. So if your basal metabolic rate is 1000 calories, your daily activities adds another 500 calories, and structured exercise (i.e., workouts) adds to the total calories--let's say 500. So your caloric needs for weight maintenance would be 2000 calories in this scenario. Thus, for weight loss, if you eat just your basal calories of 1000, plus "eat back" your 500 exercise calories for total 1500 calories intake-- that would still leave a 500 calorie deficit (from your daily activity)--which amounts to about a 1 lb per week weight loss. If you don't eat back your exercise calories, and consume only your basal calories of 1000, you'll have a higher deficit and more weight loss.

But eating your basal calories presumably keeps your body from thinking that it is starving and thereby slowing weight loss. Given your prolonged inactivity while you were ill, it is possible that your metabolism has slowed. Alternatively, illness is a high stress state and you could have had a boosted metabolism (esp. since you were metabolizing for two and trying to heal an ailing body).

Seek additional medical advice. I'm an MD btw, but since I don't have the details of your medical history/exam this is strictly "friend" advice, not a medical opinion.

It's great you've made it so far, and even are able to look at other goals besides making it another day.

If you just feel the need to exercise, perhaps figure out what 500 cal worth of exercise would be in whatever you enjoy, and only 4 times a week max.
And eat those calories back, plus more as suggested.

To calculate the exercise calories, HR monitor will be the most accurate you can use, if like Polar it has you enter gender, age, weight at the least.
If not going to use, hit several exercise calorie calculator sites and compare the calorie burns. Lose the outlying figures and avg the rest.
When you see activity names/paces that are exactly the same, know they bought the same data table, so don't mess with multiples.

http://www.primusweb.com/cgi-bin/fpc/actcalc.pl