Losing 2lbs per week..how many calories to burn??

[pinkjunee]

Hi, I've just started using a Fitbit. I eat 1200 calories a day (I'm using myfitnesspal for my food plan instead of Fitbit because it confuses me). I want to lose 2lbs a week but I'm not sure how many calories I need to be burning per day? Right now I am burning 1500 a day. 800 of those calories were from when I was asleep and wasn't wearing it!! Im 5ft and weigh 138lbs. Am I burning enough or too much?

[bikerhiker]

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@pinkjunee wrote:

Hi, I've just started using a Fitbit. I eat 1200 calories a day (I'm using myfitnesspal for my food plan instead of Fitbit because it confuses me). I want to lose 2lbs a week but I'm not sure how many calories I need to be burning per day? Right now I am burning 1500 a day. 800 of those calories were from when I was asleep and wasn't wearing it!! Im 5ft and weigh 138lbs. Am I burning enough or too much?

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Well, if you're age 20 or so, 5ft 138lbs, your BMR would approx be 1500 calories.  That is, if you just stay in bed all day.  If you're eating 1200 calories/day and stay in bed all day then, your caloric deficit would be 300 calories.  Now if you do walk around and burn 200 more calories, then each day you would create a 500 calories deficit, which then in a week would create a 3500 calories deficit, which equals to 1 lb of weight loss.  If you want 2lbs weight loss / week, it would be 7000 calories/week or 1000 calories deficit "on top" of your BMR per day.  Which means, you need to create a 2500 caloric deficit (1000 calories deficit + 1500 calories BMR).  This is an aggressive way to loose weight and not necessarily fat.  It's easy to shed water weight by extreme weight dieting, though sometimes that would only result in loosing weight but not a single fat is burned. 

[Esya]

@pinkjunee

Not the answer you want to hear, but the scale will tell. Log what you are doing for a few weeks (both food and calories burned) from that starting point you figured out and see what impact it has on your weight. Then adjust if needed. After the adjustment log again for a few weeks and see what the scale says then. Keep checking with the scale until you find what works for you.