A really REALLY good read is Tom Venuto's Burn the fat, Feed The Muscle. That would be something REALLY good for your parents to read, to learn about the scientific processes of losing weight.

This site is good to work out your daily calories needs - remember this number is how much you should eat if all you do is lay in bed all day!
BMR Calculator

Once you have found out how many calories you need you need to add in your daily activity - Harris Benedict Equation
This is done by multiplying your BMR by a number that equates to your daily activities.

Your basal metabolic rate seems to be around 1900 calories. This is how much you should eat if all you are doing is lying in bed all day.

Just say you get up and go to school or move around, go to the shops etc. you would need 1900 calories X 1.2 = 2280 calories.

Just say you started lightly exercising 1-3 days a week you would now need 2612 calories to maintain your weight.

Using this number - 2280 calories - to lose 1lb per week in fat you would need to cut 500 calories from your diet (theoretically) which would give you 1780 calories per day.
Just say you wanted to lose 1.5lbs of fat per week, you could add in 250 calories worth of exercise (40 minute walk, 30 Minute run, 30 minute bike ride).

Being at 1200 calories per day does not mean that you will lose more fat, you are basically starving your body, and you might plateau earlier because you cut your calories so drastically.

A good plan would be to eat maybe 1700 calories a day of unprocessed, fresh foods. Including lean proteins, dairy, complex carbs, healthy fats, fruits and vegetables, some treats.
It looks like you eat a lot of processed foods - if your parents want you to be healthy and lose weight maybe you should encourage them to buy more fruits and vegetables, and lean proteins.

Losing weight fast is not good!
I guarantee you it won't stay off... slowly losign weight is the key. You dont want to regain it all a couple of months after you go back to your normal diet.

If your paretns seem to think they know better and you can't make 'em see otherwise with some research... then just leave them out of how many calories you're eating! Remember, this is YOUR journey!

That sounds about right to me (1800 calories). Of course as you get close to goal that number will go down, but it sounds right for now.

I weigh myself every day. The thing you have to be aware of is that your weight will jump up and down (you'll notice the up more) without any apparent rhyme or reason. I weigh myself first thing in the morning, after going potty, before consuming anything, wearing only my panties.

If you weigh yourself every day, make sure it's at the same time, wearing the same thing...and remember if you drink 16 oz of water your weight will be up one pound. You can't live and die by the scale. That's one thing I like best about fitday. I can look back at my weight loss and see just how much progress I have made when it doesn't feel like I'm making progress.

BTW...what part of VA are you in? (If you don't mind my asking) I'm in the Shenandoah Valley, just outside of Harrisonburg.

I live in the Northern tip of VA, in Winchester.
It is SO boring here. There's nothing to do, my friends and I have to go out of town to have fun. The movie theatres here suck. Although we are getting a Sonic! (Oh great, another reason to eat unhealthily :P) But yeah, I can't drive yet, so I have to rely on my parents for transportation.

gah.

Yeah

so yeh.

Thanks for your help guys!

I've been to Winchester a couple of times but don't remember much about it. It seems like it's big enough that you should be able to find ways to amuse yourself other than anticipating the arrival of the new Sonic.

You're much younger than I realized, but back in the day when I didn't have a driver's license, I used an old fashioned method of transportation. I walked or rode a bike, so don't be using that as an excuse for not getting exercise. You can find a way to move if you try.

Also, please tell me you don't consume the crap they serve for school lunch. Bring yourself something healthy from home instead.

Her daily calorie needs would be higher than that, that is the number she would need to eat if all she did all day was lie in bed and not move around. To get daily calorie needs she has to times that number by 1.2

I meant it sounded about right for weight loss, not maintainance. Am I wrong?

Ohhhh ok, sorry I thought you meant maintenance!

Haha... Yeah I know. I'm not actually that excited now that I'm kind of watching what I eat, and I know I really don't have much of an excusenot to exercise more, it just seems a little unsafe around my neighborhood to go out biking (I'm a wimp, I get scared and intimidated easliy. It's something I need to work on)
Also, I'm not actually in high school any more, I got my ged and I'm now starting to take college courses. I'm hoping that my scholarship application comes through so my parents don't have to put 3 kids through college at the same time.
I have to go walk on the treadmill and watch some cheesy lifetime movie.



<3

Cool about those college courses... what kind of things are you studying... what area do youy wanna go into when you go study full time?

Damn, I had a 1.3 gain today... but all due to muscle being heavier than fat and me having 3 bad days out of 7 last week!

Good luck for the rest of your week, you're doing well

I'm going into psychology. I want to be a therapist to people with disorders like mine.

I weighed in this morning at 220.7!


I've been trying to be extra good today because I'm going out for pizza with my family after my graduation (I think I've earned this one!) YAY!! I'm so excited!

I had a string cheese instead of chips. I think that works. I don't know how much of a calorie difference there is, but I figured that at least the cheese has protein, right?

Muscle does weigh more than fat, but there is no way you gained 1.3 pounds of muscle in one day. I weighed 152 yesterday and today I was 154.6 or 155.0 (depending on which number you wanna believe...my scale gave me an error reading right after the 155 so I weighed myself again).

Anyway, any time your weight fluctuates that much in one day, it's water or food you haven't eliminated from your system yet or something like that. It's not true weight (meaning lean muscle mass or fat).

Hey Lily, congrats on the college coursework. You're obviously a smart bunny. Good luck on the scholarship too.

Ok... working it out. A cheese string has about 80 calories. 5 g of fat (3 g form saturated and 1 g from unsaturated mono fats), 1 g of carbs, and 8 g of protein.

Let's say you were going for a small bag of chips...doritos cus I know you love them (as I do) - calories - 250. 13 g of fat (2.5g from saturated), 30 g of carbs, 4 g of protein.

The cheese is WAYYYYY healthier. The chips have been fried in grease and have no real nutritional value. The cheese has lots of HEALTHY fats which you need and has double the protein and way less carbs.

If your ever unsure, you should do the comparison. either on fitday.com or just look up the food in google. example search: doritos calories.

And the calories are not the only thing that is important. You need to be concerned about fat, protein, and carbs.

I'm glad you chose the cheese string though. Good for you

Hey Judy, sorry, I don't think I was quite clear... I gained that 1.3 in one week. I only weigh once a week (for my sanity!) Thanks for the help

Ahahaha... I don't know how I did it, but even after eating 2 slices of stuffed crust pizza at my graduation party, I still lost almost a pound! I'm now 220.1 lbs!!
YAY!!!
<3

Oh, and I didn't get the scholarship. Apparently I didn't NEED it badly enough. The 2 people who got it were in really cruddy situations with no way to go to college without it.

So, in a way, I'm kind of glad I didn't get it, because that means I'm in better shape situationally than those two. And I don't have to worry about taking on a full load, so I can just go my own pace.



So yeah, that's what's going on over here in Annatopia.
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