For the Average person, who has moderate levels of activity:


Multiply the weight you WANT to be X 15 calories = # of calories per day you can eat.


(Example: To reach 160# you would need to maintain a daily caloric intake of 2400 calories.)

If you start a diet at this level of intake you will eventually go down to your desired weight and level off at that weight with that caloric intake. You will need to maintain that caloric intake level to stay at your goal weight.

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I prefer a psychological edge. The first week of my diet I eat 800 calories per day. The second week 1000 calories per day. The third week and thereafter: 1200 calories per day until I reach my desired weight. I lost 50# in 6 months on this diet....about 2# a week. My cholesterol level dropped to 75 (low normal is `150) which was spectacular....my Doctor shook his head in amazement. At the end of the diet I had the option to resume 3075 calories a day to maintain 205#. It was more than I could eat for some time and I maintained that weight until a recent injury....over 10 yrs. It works. Be sure to drink a minimum of 2 Liters of water per day during a diet and make sure your Doctor feels you are up to the level of dieting you want to attempt. I can't imagine anyone having a problem with 2000 calories a day. If you have special medical conditions, such as Diabetes, you will need to have help adjusting your medication and monitoring blood sugar levels.


IMPORTANT!!!!! You must engage in some level of exercise during dieting. Thr reason for this is that if you do not you will lose muscle mass instead of fat. This will REDUCE you caloric burning and make it harder to lose and maintain weight. If you exercise (say a 1.5 mile walk a day x 5 days a wee) you will build toned muscle, not bulky muscle, and lose fat. I like to work out with light weights 5-10# so iI don't sag in my arms. Building muscle burns MORE calories per day increasing the burning of calories. You won't lose weight as fast but you will lose inches faster, which is what you really want...and build a nice toned buttocks area as well as legs. I use weights and do mild exercises that involve all the parts of my body (I alternate them every other day) and I jog daily. So I get a little edge in weight loss from exercise...however you must run 40 miles at 8 min/mile to lose a pound so don't count on this....it's calories that matter how much you lose....exercise determines WHAT you lose, muscle mass or fat.

You can't skip this part without danger of the cycle of losing muscle and then burning fewer calories and gaining a higher % of body fat a vicious cycle that will have you repeatedly gaining back the weight and having a harder time losing it the next time. At a minimum, work up to a 1.5 mile walk 5 times a week.

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That said. They now realize that some people just have a lower metabolic rate and are going to be overweight. If they diet they go into a simulated "starvation" mode and their metabolism drops precipitously. They eat almost nothing, show symptoms of starvation and still can't lose weight. This is probably an evolutionary bonus from times of sparse food...these were survivors. They are working to find out how to help these people, but there really is no way they can get below a certain weight/food intake level. The only way to be sure is to count calories and weekly weigh-ins to see if you are losing weight at the predicted level.

You are 250#. It takes 3750 calories a day to maintain it.
You have a target goal of 200 # and eat 3000 calories per day....750 cal/day short of the amount to maintain your 250#.
This means you are 5250 calories a week short of the # of calories a week to maintain your 250#. You will lose one pound of body fat for every 4000 calories you are short. 5250/4000 = 1.3# a week weight loss. (At 1200 calories a day I would have been 2550 calories a day short or about 18,000 a week. That resulded in iintial weight loss of about 4.5# per week.

If you stay on this caloric intake your weight loss/wk will decrease as you approach 200#, but you will continue to lose weight (weigh in the morning after using the bathroom and before eating....remember, a pint's a pound the world around. You may get variants over short term, but over months the weight should decrease. If it does not, if it flattens out for a couple months of devoted dieting and mild exercise, you may have a metabolic decrease and need to see a doctor to have it measured.

If you are one of these unlucky people, you will have to accept a weight that does not throw you into starvation mode until science catches up. Don't feel guilty. You are one of the people whose ancesters survived during low food availability and carried the genes for it forward, enabling the human race to survive.

On the other side. I had a 98# ggf who would not gain a pound even out eating me while i ran 3 miles a day at high speed, lifted heavy weights and did 10 hrs a week of martial arts. She was an eating machine and thin as a fence post. Sigh.

Hope this information is of help.

Keli,

I failed to mention that I weight-loss diet on ADA (American Dietetic Association) diets. The reason is that it is far easier to manage your diet with "exchanges" which let you modify the plethora of available meals and menus by simple substitution. No calorie counting because the exchange has done that for you. All you need is a kitchen scale to measure portions. If you don't like one food on a meal plan you can switch it for one you do like. The ADA plan assures you get a balanced diet at any caloric level. It's by far the easiest diet to follow that I have ever tried.

My weight-loss diet program uses ADA diets and Aerobic (Dr. Cooper's program) exercise.