calorie counting help

L

Lesley Jane

0
Hi everyone I am new to this site and new to trying to lose weight

I am 5 foot 3 and weigh 140lb. I have used some of the links I found on this site and they say to maintain my weight I need to eat approx 1600 calories a day.
Well obviously I need to reduce that to lose weight. so was thinking of cutting back to about 1200. Does that sound OK?

Also can anyone help with finding a calorie counter as I have not idea how many calories are in anything :(

any help much appreciated
 
Hi Lesley, welcome. Check this site out for nutrition data an almost any food out there.

Taken from bmi-calculator.net ...
"If you want to lose fat, a useful guideline for lowering your calorie intake is to reduce your calories by at least 500, but not more than 1000 below your maintenance level. For people with only a small amount of weight to lose, 1000 calories will be too much of a deficit. As a guide to minimum calorie intake, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 calories per day for men. Even these calorie levels are quite low."
 
Counting calories

Lesley Jane,
Ironically I am the exact same height and weight as you. I have experimented with counting my calories before and found a great website to help calculate the amount of calories you need to cut in order to lose a certain amount of weight. The website is

It says this on the website, but just incase you don't see it, be sure not to reduce your caloric intake by so much that you lose more than one pound a week, because you can only lose one pound of fat per week and after that you begin losing muscle weight.

I also found it to be a lot easier to count my calories and keep up with my goal if I keep a food journal and list everything I have eaten and the amount of calories in it.

Here are some more websites for nutrition information incase you need them.



I have also found that eating food such as fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, fish and lean meats has helped lose more weight than just cutting calories without eating healthier.

Sorry about the length, but hope it helps! Good Luck!
Erin :)
 
Thanks Erin thats really helpful.

I am very new to this losing weight stuff. At the age of 43 its just sort of crept up on me. As I was only 8 stone untill I hit forty :(

Think I am going to have a good read around and try and work out the best way to do all this.

At the moment I am just trying to cut down on the food and up the exercise. If that doesnt work I guess I will have to look at it in more depth :confused:
 
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