How many calories should I eat to lose weight?

[ChrissyChickie]

Hi.  I'm 5'8, 52 and 255lbs.  I am not very active thoughout the day.  How many calories should I eat to lose 2lbs a week?  Thank you.

[Heybales]

How many calories does Fitbit estimate you burn a day on average?

1000 less than that.

Have you gone through the setup on Fitbit where it asks about your goals?

Pick 2 lbs weekly Aggressive goal.

Depending on what you mean by not very active, that could be about 1300 and up based on not enough info.

When you have under 50 lbs left to healthy weight - keep it reasonable for your body so it doesn't fight you back - switch to 1.5 lb weekly.

At 30 lbs - 1 lb.

15 lbs - 1/2 lb weekly.

[ChrissyChickie]

Thank you for your response.   When I put in how much I want to lose 2lbs a week it said that I need to eat I believe 1427.  However, after logging all of my food (I may have overestimated calories because I can't figure how to guess the calories in my homemade chili), it says I over ate.  It said: " Whoops!You're 1018 over your daily goal of 1217 cals. Burn more calories to get back to your goal."   So, this has me really confused now because this little message that just popped up says my daily goal is '1217' .  I'm just not understanding this.  😞

[Heybales · Accepted solution]

When you do your initial setup it has no idea what you are going to burn.

But it sets a goal for Daily burn based on I think a little above sedentary - and then you were told what the eating level would be if you reached that goal - sounds like the 1427.

Now that you have a real daily burn - you are told the actual eating level for a 1000 cal deficit - sounds like 1217.

So it may still have a daily burn goal set for 2427.

You hit a daily burn of 2217.

Just 200 off their goal.

But set the daily burn goal to whatever you think is realistic. The eating goal will always go along with whatever you actually do.

Perhaps from experience you know you'll only be happy with meals if you can eat 2000 daily.

Well, then daily burn goal better be 3000 that you hit.

Perhaps you know that is no where near realistic, so you are willing to eat 1500 and on most days you can burn 2500. You can set that goal.

Knowing if you don't reach it - you don't get to eat your 1500.

As to food logging - you'll have to figure this out or the whole purpose of logging is pretty useless on either eaten or burned.

Weigh the pot it'll be cooked and served in.

Weigh and note info on each ingredient that went into the pot.

While it's cooking, come up with total calories in that pot by logging it.

When it's finished, weigh the whole thing, subtract the pot weight - there's the weight for those total calories.

Now weigh your serving, and you'll know serving / total = % of calories for you.

Say it ends up being 2400 calories logged.

Weighs 48 oz.

You take 8 oz (which is NOT half a cup BTW for anyone reading) by weight because it fills the bowl with the fritos (weighed and logged of course!)

8 / 48 x 2400 = 400 cal.

I'd suggest using grams though since all your ingredients were logged by grams since that was on the nutrition label. Just to get used to it.

When you have leftovers - just weigh what you take again, do the math if different.

[ChrissyChickie]

Thanks so much for explaining this!!

[Miguel_374]

Thank you for the explanation.