HELP! The Allowance says I should eat 1229 to lose my weight, but then I read to eat more to lose weight!

I just went to the Allowance on this site and it told me to lose my weight by my goal I have to eat 1229 calories a day, but I read just before that that I should raise my calories by about 100-200 calories a day! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!!!!!!!

Maybe you are setting an unrealistic goal? How much do you want to lose, what do you weight now, what is your height and age and when do you want to lose the weight by? Also, what activity level did you enter in?

1229 calories a day is for if you're SEDENTARY. If you are exercising, you will need to eat back what you burn.

If your lifestyle is sedentary, it sounds about right, I'm sedentary, and should eat 1250 cals a day. I then calculate the activity cals I've saved and add them. Sometimes I save them for a special occasion, and that has worked really well for me so far.

Eating back calories isn't always the best plan - unless she is working out every day and working out hard. My recommended amount to eat to lose is 1250 or so calories a day. This gives me a 300 calorie deficit. If I exercise it will be a about a 500 calorie deficit, which is still reasonable. I don't workout every day so don't normally eat back calories unless I am very hungry after working out. I would recommend she only eat back her calories if the deficit is over 1000 calories or if when you work out the 1200 calories is really hard to maintain, or if you are working out every day in which case you need an average of over 1200 calories to stay healthy.

That being said, we don't know anything about your height, weight, age, weightloss goals so it's difficult to say for sure what you should do.

Thank you for your help. I am 14, 5"5 and 130 pounds (it goes between 120 and 130 all the time). I wan to get to a healthy 115 by the end of August. I now this may sound incredibly stupid, but I don't quite understand what the sedentary thing means. Could someone explain please?

Sendentary is what your body would burn off (during the course of 24 hours) with you doing NOTHING at all.  literally sleep and lay down.  No activity at all.  At least that's what i think it means.  maybe someone else can put in their opinion to help.  :)

Ok thank you. So does that mean that I should eat that much and exercise and then I will lose weight or should I eat more than that and exercise? I'm still kind of confused, but thank you for explaining sedentary!

From what I understand, when you calculate the recommended calories you must eat to reach your goal weight, there are several possible choices you must choose from that describe how active you are (sedentary, moderate, active, etc.). Under these choices, there are descriptions about what those levels mean. If you do not go out of your way to do work out and do not have an active job, just choose sedentary. Then the calories it recommends is what you should stick to if you want to lose the weight by that goal. If you work out moderately, chose the next level. If you are very active each day, chose that option and it will recalculate the suggested calories for that  level. I would suggest not worrying about eating back calories. It should be factored into the calculation.

As far as I understand, 1 lbs. is equal to about 3500 calories. So to lose one pound each week, you need to eat a total of  500 calories less each day compared to what you burn. Sedentary is what your body burns without extra exercise. As you do more, that will help to get you to the 500+ deficit. If you want to lose 2 lbs a week, eat 1000 less a day than you burn. Don't go beyond that though. It only works to a point before you start losing muscle as well as fat...

Hope this helps.

If you set an unrealistic goal, it will give you an unrealistic calorie intake.  if it's telling you to eat that little, then what you have set, is an unrealistic goal.

You're a teenager, please search the forums for the information specific to teenagers.  130 doesn't seem unreasonable to me for your height.

Weslosky thank you so much for explaining it! I finally get it!:D