Going to increase my calorie intake - advice needed

I am a 42 year old female, current weight 205lb, height 5ft 4 and have been "trying" to eat 1200 calories a day, a can maintain this for a few days but then end up binge eating dramatically and eating anything and everything in sight, im aware that im obviously doing something wrong. I go spinning three times a week but other than that i dont really get a great deal of excercise, i think that i may have been overestimating the amount of calories burnt as my hrm is not the best, but that said i try not to eat back my exercise calories.

Im going to try and increase my calorie intake to 1500 a day but this seems very alien to me. Is this the right thing to do, have i got the calculations right, is there someone who could perhaps point me in the right direction.

I will be very grateful for the right advice from someone who knows what they are talking about, but i am scared of increasing by calories. I hope someone can help. Many thanks

Don't just up to 1500 without knowing your BMR.
Find out your BMR, work out your TDEE and then take the deficit from there.

at 205lbs, TDEE would be minimum 2500 so she'll definitely still be in deficit.

I was more concerned about the deficit being too large than too small.

WIth a TDEE of 2500, eating 1200 calories at a deficit of 50%+ is nuts!

Hi ya. Just a wee bit of personal info for you. I also started at 1200 - and to be honest it worked for a while. Then I (very reluctantly) increased to 1500 and ate ALL my excercise calories. Result - great weight loss and didn't feel deprived. When I reached my goal weight tho - trying (still am) to find my maintenance cals was an eye opener! I went up to 1700, then 1800, 1900, 2000 (and still ate my excercise cals). As a result I was still losing - which was taking me below my goal. So now I am at about 2500 and only puting on a tiny wee amount. So basically the moral of my story is - you can actually eat a lot more than you think and still loss.

PS - my husband got stuck in the rut and throught less food = more loss. UNTIL he saw the amount of cals I was eating in maintemance. So he totally upped his cals and hey presto - he has started lossing.

Good luck with your journey.

Hey there! I'm 5'1" and started off eating 1300... then it pushed me to 1200 after I lost weight. I always ate back my exercise cals, but I was soooo hungry all the time. 1200 wasn't enough for me, no matter how strategically I planned my meals. Then I plateaued. So at the advice of my friends on here, I increased my cals to 1500 (AND eating back my exercise cals), I've kick-started my weight loss again. I changed my weight loss to 0.5lb/week and I've *magically* lost much more than that most weeks. The links everyone have been providing you are great resources. Read them. Remember - if you're going to be eating more cals, it's the quality of those cals! It's the water you're drinking. And the exercise. And eat back those cals too. It works for most people! I'm sending you a friend request - you can see what I've been doing. I haven't worked out much in the last few weeks (I just had a tonsillectomy and was sick prior, which is why I had the tonsillectomy) but you can see what I've been doing. It works! :happy: