How accurate is CC's estimate of daily calorie intake recommendation?

When I plug in my stats : 5'2"  Female, 40 yrs,  CW: 117  GW: 110

CC recommends that I take in 1200 to safely lose .5 to a pound per week.  Does this seem to low for me?  When I read other posts, it seems that 1200 is bare minimum and even people my height are being recommended to eat more than 1200.  I stuck with 1200 because I trust CC but maybe it's too low?

And advice/opinions are appreciated.

I believe it has a lot to do with your height and the distance to your goal weight. I am 5'3" and weight 229 (21lbs. down!) and CC says that I should eat 1350. I think that shorter people have lower numbers, sorry.

at 5'2 117 and moderately active you burn about 1900 calories a day, according to phord.com/cc

with that being said, you can eat about 1400 calories a day and lose a pound a week if you exercise for 4-5 days a week for at least 30 minutes or so.

If you were in a coma you would burn 1400 calories a day, so eating 1200 is definitely way to low.

even lightly active which s roughly 1-2 times a week you burn about 1700 calories, at this level you could eat 1200 and lose 1 pound per week but if you are regularly exercising i'd still to 1400-1500 calories a day. this is more sustainable and likely to keep you motivated rather than irritated and starving!!

Chrissy, that is good news!  I ate 1300 today and thought I overate....but I actually under ate!  I thought 1200 was kinda low....I do work out ~5 days per week between 30-50min (mostly cardio).  I plugged in "lightly active" as I'm mostly sedentary aside from my workouts, the recommendation was still 1200....I wonder why?  My weight loss overall has been a bit slow....up and down daily although the trend has been downwards mostly.  But definitely, I'm not losing a pound per week.  I'm 7 pounds from my goal and although I expected a slow loss journey, I can't wait to hit my goal and start the maintenance stage.  Maybe upping my daily calories will help speed up my loss (that sounds so strange and contradictory).  I can only hope!  Thanks!

The calculators used on this website are only guidelines - how can a calculator know each individuals body!? Each person of the same weight, height, and activity level may need slightly different amounts of calories!

Feeling slightly hungry is normal when losing weight - you are eating slightly less then our body needs. So some hunger is to be expected.

However, if you are feeling so hungry that it affects important aspects of your life, than you need to increase your calories to a more manageable level!

As I said - most people will experience SOME hunger while losing weight, but it needs to be manageable; it cannot make you feel so miserable that you cannot do your job and etc.

Your body will dictate the amount of calories you need - meaning you should use the guidelines off the website - and make adjustments when/if needed.

The calculator on this website is pretty good though - it does a lot of work and calculations and saves people a lot of effort! And the basic scientific calculations that the website uses is a good place to start from - if it is WAY too much or WAY to little people can then fine tune things until they get it right!

If you put in sedentary as activity level it will come up with a calorie level to fit in with that, if you add in any activity then the number of calories recomended may be wrong. For me it comes up with about 1600. If I did no exersise I would have a deficit of 800, which would be OK. But now I have added in exercise to my lifestyle adding that in would give me a deficit of over 1000 on the days I exersise. So on those days i up my calories to get back into the 500 to 1000 deficit range. Dont want to go into starvation mode andstop any weight loss. (Seems to be working for me I am losing about 2 lbs a week)

I would suggest keeping an eye on the meters, and aim for that, Also take a couple of days to write down all you do (all the office / house work you do) often we underestimate how active we are. (I have reacently got a step meter and didnt realise till I looked at that how much I walk about at work)

Hope that helps some.