Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Calories to LOSE and MAINTAIN

It is good to know your numbers when it comes to weight loss because it really is all about the math!  It takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose 1 pound.  You get that through a daily deficit of food intake (calories) and you can also burn calories through exercise.  I burn on average about 1,800 calories a week through exercise, so if I want to lose 1 pound a week, I have to cut my food down the other 1700 calories - 243 calories less a day.  

Lately, instead of going by my maintenance calories of around 2250, I decided to go by my Active Metabolic Rate (AMR), which is 1720 without exercise.  It is higher depending on what method you use to calculate it but I decided to go by this particular one.  So, I take 1720 and subtract those 243 calories a day I need to decrease so that I can lose a pound a week.  That gives me 1477 but I am going with 1450 to make it easier.

I just started 1450 calories on Sunday and am excited to see if this will help me finish my weight loss by September hopefully!  I wasn't sure what scale weight I needed to aim for because my goals are losing inches in bust, waist and hips.  I'm guessing that my scale weight will be around 140-145 when I reach my desired inches for those areas.  I wanted to see what will I have to eat to maintain those weights.  It is always nice to know if what you are aiming for is going to be something you can maintain and do you really want to eat that low to keep that small?

Currently, I'm up a pound from weight training my legs (which I had stopped for several months but recently added back in), but I started with 155 to make it easier:


⭐ 155 pounds maintain:

1714 no exercise
1964 with exercise 1-3 days/week
2213 with exercise 3-5 days/week

⭐ 150 pounds maintain:

1687 no exercise
1933 with exercise 1-3 days/week
2179 with exercise 3-5 days/week

⭐ 145 pounds maintain:

1661 no exercise
1903 with exercise 1-3 days/week
2145 with exercise 3-5 days/week

⭐ 140 pounds maintain:

1636 no exercise
1874 with exercise 1-3 days/week
2113 with exercise 3-5 days/week

⭐ 135 pounds maintain:

1609 no exercise
1844 with exercise 1-3 days/week
2079 with exercise 3-5 days/week


I think 135 would be the lowest I would ever want to go!  I have too much muscle and wouldn't want to lose it to achieve anything lower than that and I want to still look like a feminine woman with curves.  It looks like to maintain my future weight I'm aiming for, I will need to eat under 2100 calories a day if I exercise like I do now.  Exercise isn't something you just do to lose weight and quit doing when you are at goal!  As you can clearly see above in those numbers, if I didn't exercise I would be eating a very low amount of food a day just to maintain.  NO THANK YOU!  I like to eat, so I will take the 3-5 days of exercise a week calorie level.


*I was doing 1700 calories a day and it was taking me 1-3 weeks to lose a pound.  That is easy to understand WHY if you look at the math.  My deficit each day was only coming from my exercise and I was burning about 1800 a week, so I was only losing 1/2 a pound a week and some weeks when I didn't get sufficient exercise caloric burn, I was only losing 1/4 a pound a week.  We will see if decreasing my caloric intake by about 250 calories, will give me that 1 pound a week I hope for!  If I just can't eat that low, I will go back to 1700 calories because I was very comfortable there and it will just have to take longer to get to goal.
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