"Hitting 300"

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Hi everyone. I just turned 27 (male) and recently hit 305 lbs. I've decided to be active towards weight-loss, ...again. The only difference this time is I've decided to start a blog at Blogger. I've been doing it for about 9 days now (not long, I know). I've been trying to track my experience so far.

I started by walking 4 miles. It was pretty difficult to do right away at this weight, so I took the next day off to recover. Now, I've gotten into this habit of walking every other day. I've been reading about a lot of people that walk every day which I can't understand since I'm having such difficulty with my route. But, it's not difficult enough for me to quit (so far).

Furthermore, I've been attempting some portion control. I've changed what I eat at work, and cut my portions in half at home. If my family decides to eat out, I opt for a salad or something similarly healthy. I've completely cut out fast-food and soft-drinks and I'm slowly trying to cut out other processed foods. However, being completely new to this, I'm having a lot of difficulty tracking calories and things, or even knowing how many calories I should be taking in. I need some help!

I heard from somewhere that you should take your ideal weight and multiply it by 14, and that's how many calories you should in ingesting. Since I'm aiming for 230 lbs., I should be ingesting no more than 3,220 calories a day. That doesn't sound right to me. You can understand my confusion.

Anyway, a quick rundown of my story is this. My weight has constantly fluctuated. I started out skinny and started getting chubby around grade 4-5. By grade 7 I was one of the largest kids in class. By grade 9 though, I was really slim and pretty popular in high-school. By grade 11, I was fat again, for my age. A few years later, I was down to about 210, 220 lbs. (I really don't look very healthy being much smaller than that), and after quitting my job for a desk job, I grew to this weight (305 lbs.) 3 years later.

My weight change has always been so drastic and at such important stages in my life that if you were to put all my pictures together in a row, chronologically, you wouldn't be able to tell they were all of the same person. However, every change has been completely natural. I have never needed any sort of intervention to get me back down to a healthy weight. That is, until now.

I've been getting bigger and bigger and 300 lbs. is a weight I never though I'd hit. Realizing I've surpassed that point, I've started a blog called "Hitting 300". Like I said, this is only my 9th day at this, but I'm trying to blog every day. I have no real weight-loss plan to follow other than walking every other day (weather permitting) and trying to be more conscious about what I eat. I'm hoping to develop a routine as time goes by.

I think it's safe to say I've lost about 2-3 lbs. so far.

I'm reaching out to you guys here and at other forms. I'm just copy and pasting this message to see what kind of reception I get from each before deciding which forum to focus on, but I will always be at my "Hitting 300" blog. If anyone would like to check out my progress (I've been weighing myself every day), then head over to hitting300.blogspot.com and follow me! If that's not your bag though, I'll still be cruising these forums in search for tips and tricks (ie. I hear a glass of wine a day was good to lose weight, and then I hear it's not).

Anyway, thanks for your time and patience in reading this, and I hope I can meet a few people in my same situation, and possibly work together at our goals.

Have a great night!
 
I heard from somewhere that you should take your ideal weight and multiply it by 14, and that's how many calories you should in ingesting. Since I'm aiming for 230 lbs., I should be ingesting no more than 3,220 calories a day. That doesn't sound right to me. You can understand my confusion.

That is a way to estimate your maintenance calories. Except instead of 14, the number can really be anywhere from 10-16, depending on your activity. So, 2300-3700... pretty big range, huh? There is another formula, the Harris-Benedict equation. It too depends on your activity, but it gives a little description with the multipliers to help you determine which one to use.

Either way you calculate it, this is your maintenance level - the number of calories you can eat and neither gain nor lose weight. If you want to lose weight, you need to be in a defecit - eat less than maintenance. 3500 calories is a pound of fat, so eating in a defecit of 500 calories per day should yield you 1lb lost per week. It is an accepted healthy rate, to lose 1% of your current weight per week. So, you can lose ~2.5-3 lbs per week if you really try hard. That means, once you find your maintenance level, you can subtract 1000-1500 calories and eat that much to lose 2-3lbs per week.

You might not get the right number right away - like I explained, the formulas aren't going to give you the correct number if you're incorrectly representing your activity. Once you pick a starting value of calories you're eating, watch your results. If you're losing more quickly or less quickly than you expected, you can adjust your intake to lose weight at the rate you want.


You can find lots of other information on this site to help you along your way - there's more to this site than just the journals/blogging. The sitckies in the various subforums have a ton of information - it might not hurt to just start at the top and read through them all. There are clubs and challenges and different ways to be involved, get help, and stay motivated.
 
Wow, thanks a lot, Mar! Now it's even MORE confusing! :p I'm going to try to find out my proper maintenance calories, and try to work on counting calories all together. I don't think I should be too concerned just yet with the specifics until I hit some sort of plateau. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to lose weight for a while by adding some extra walking (as opposed to none) and portion control (half of what I usually would eat) for the time being.

While I'm doing that, I can study these methods leisurely. I don't think I will have to get really precise with my calories until I hit some sort of plateau or until I finally get comfortable being able to memorize calories of the food I eat throughout the day. I really hate having to run to the computer to Google "how many calories are in a tablespoon of ketchup", and things like that. Which ever one comes first, I suppose.

I really appreciate the response! I'm going to need to learn certain keywords to search/study since I really am completely new to this.

Thank you.
 
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