Hello Everyone

I was hoping maybe someone here could help me out. I REALLY need to get healthy and lose weight. I have tried gathering info online but everything I read tells me something different, so I am just confused as to what I should do. Since most people on here have some experience with losing weight successfully I thought I could find some insight. I am looking for 1. the calorie intake I should be aiming for 2. the types of food I should have (things high in Iron would be nice b/c mine is low ) and 3. what kind of exercises I should do. I have a larger upper body (belly mostly, and arms) I guess you could say I am "apple" shaped. Here are my stats:

5'3''
185 pounds
Female
22 years old

I don't have a very active lifestyle (obviously.hehe.) I work about 30 hours a week standing and casually walking the whole time (Starbucks!) I am hoping to lose around 2 pounds a week (I think thats ok?) and then slowly less as I lose weight.

So, hopefully someone will take pitty on me and help me out

Thanks!

HI and welcome.

The first thing I'd suggest is that you read the various sticky posts in all the forums. A lot of the questions you have will be answered there and it'll give you a lot of information to get started with.

Here's my basic information on calories and nutrition.

The easiest way I've found to figure calories is to take a figure of 14-15 calories per pound of bodyweight for a moderately active adult (as in, works out 2-3 times a week). I tend to use 14 for women and 15 for men. For you:

14 * 185 = 2590 calories to maintain your current weight.

Subtract 30% from that to get a reasonable level of "diet" calories.

2002 * 70% = 1813 calories to lose weight.

YOu want to make sure the calories you eat are made up mostly of complex carbs, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Ideally you should aim for a 40/30/30 split of your nutrients - that's 40% complex carbs, 30% lean protein, and 30% healthy fat.

My personal preference is also to avoid processed foods. My experience has been that at some point eating too many processed foods will cause a stall in weight. Between the sodium and the chemicals, your body treats processed food differently than it treats fresh "real" food.

If you eat healthily, you should be able to expect to lose about 1% of your overall bodyweight per week on average. That's a really important part ... ON AVERAGE.

Keep in mind that some weeks you might not lose as much and some weeks you might lose more. The idea is to not focus day by day, but to look at the long term trend, by weeks/months.

As far as exercise, you should do a combination of weight/strength training to make sure you don't lose lean muscle mass, and cardio to help burn excess calories. You don't have to spend hours working out - 30-45 mins a day is plenty if you do it EFFECTIVELY. Again, read the sticky posts in the exercise forums and you'll see lots of good information about how to get started with weight training (there's even a thread specifically for women) and how to incorporate effective exercise into your program.

Feel free to ask any questions - there are a lot of us here who are happy to help!

I will be following your thread, I am looking for a plan too. Right now, I am making a point to walk everday, even if I don't feel like it, and not be tempted by the goodies(I have a real sweet tooth, maybe a bit of a emotional eater) I am thinking of getting this program, it sounds really good. I posted in a different thread asking about it, and if anyone else has tried it, but I think it sets your whole plan up(IDK for sure cause I haven't bought it yet, but I 'think' I might)

Anyways, just wanted to say high, and wish you good luck with your weight loss. I am hoping to lose 75lbs, but those darn sweets, lol, man, I need better will power. Thats sort of my problem, thats why this mind set weight loss thing has me so intreeged.