How many calories are people eating a day to lose weight?

[Veggysaurus1]

I've just started my healthy eating. I weigh 12 st 7lbs and am eating 1500/1600 calories a day. I used to have a sedentary life style, mostly in the house all day but am now walking daily so I would say my lifestyle has gone from sedentary to lightly active.

Would 1500 calories a day help me see weight loss with a lightly active lifestyle?

[Dominique]

How old and tall are you? Your age and your height will affect your energy expenditure. Your average step count of 9300 (as displayed in your profile) would be consistent with light-moderate activity level (in the standard scale used to assess activity). Have you considered creating a food plan in Fitbit (if you are logging your intake in the Fitbit app, or in another app that connects to your Fitbit account, like MyFitnessPal)? The food plan would suggest how much to eat, based on your activity, your weight goal and how fast you want to reach it.

[Veggysaurus1]

I'm 27 and 5ft 4. 

I've just downloaded myfitnesspal and will start logging the food in that. 

I'm just a bit dubious of whether the calories my fitbit tells me I've burned are accurate so I don't want to eat too many calories thinking I'm burning them off. 

[Dominique]

It’s a legitimate concern, as estimating calories burned with a fitness tracker isn’t exact science. Many people tend to find their fitbits overestimate the calories they burn. If you suspect this may be the case for you too, what you could do is choose a plan that is more aggressive than what you actually want to do. For instance, let’s say you’re shooting for an average daily deficit of 500 calories. You would choose the hardest plan (deficit: 1000 calories), and if Fitbit were overestimating your calories out by 500, you would end up with an actual deficit matching your goal.

I’ll assume you’re the one being kissed on your profile photo. If this is the case, your calculated BMR would be 1514 and your total energy expenditure at the light activity level would be 2081 (I’m using this online calculator). If Fitbit is telling you you’re burning 2500 or more (while getting about 9k steps), chances are the number is on the high side.

To answer your original question, you should be able to lose weight (over time) while eating 1500 in average.

[Veggysaurus1]

Thank you for your help! 

I'm going to stick to 1500 calories for now as I suffer from migraines and have always found if I go lower than that then I'll trigger a migraine. 

I'll try to up my activity level as well. 🙂

[Dominique]

1500 calories of nutritious food and 10-12k steps (if you can up your activity to that level) should cause you to lose at a nice and sustainable pace. Feel free to join the 3-month challenge with weekly weigh-in that just started, it’s great for accountability and motivation!

[Veggysaurus1]

Thanks! I'll join. 

Will definitely make an effort to up my activity level to that amount.