Is the calorie calculator telling me to eat too much?
Lindsay writes:
I am a 23 year old female, 5’5”, and 176 lbs. My activity level is pretty light- I walk to work (about 3 miles round trip) 2 days a week and do 30 minutes of running 3 days a week. I went to this website to try their calorie calculator and it said I need to eat 1800 calories per day. That seems high! What is your advice for how many calories per day someone with my stats should be eating in order to lose weight in a healthy way?The website Lindsay refers to, A Healthy Me, provides a calorie estimate for losing a pound a week. Since it’s safe to lose up to two pounds a week (slightly more if you’re on the heavier side to begin with), we can recalculate this for speedier weight loss.
Since 3,500 calories equals a pound, Lindsay needs to burn or eliminate 500 calories from her 1,800 calorie budget every day to lose another pound a week. For most people, it’s easiest to eat 250 fewer calories and burn the other 250 calories by exercising. So to lose two pounds per week, Lindsay could make it a goal to burn 250 calories from physical activity every day (it sounds like she’s close to that most days) and eat 1,550 calories per day.
This girl has about the same stats as me! I’ve been shooting for around 1300 calories or so each day, based on nothing other than that’s what a friend of mine told me is a safe goal, but I think I’ll take Nutritionista’s advice and make 1500 my new daily goal.
1500 calories + as much exercise as possible seems totally reasonable.
