New to Calorie Count :) and a Question?

Hi!

I'm 15 years old. I guess I'm sort of a pear/hourglass, because although I don't tend to gain weight on my stomach, I have a big butt. :P At 5'4 and about 135 lbs I'm technically within a healthy BMI but since I'm small-framed, it's not ideal and I would like to get down to around 115, which I was last year and very comfortable at. I've always had a pretty healthy diet--not a lot of red meats, lots of fruits and vegetables, fish, whole grains--but I had a pretty stressful year from about September '08-May '09 and that led to my gaining about 20 lbs. 

The thing is, I'm not really sure HOW to lose weight. I've looked up guides and stuff but it never seems clear. How do I figure out how many calories I'm supposed to eat (I vary between sedentary and active)? How should I exercise, and if so, how many more calories should I eat? Sorry if this is too much to ask, but if anyone could just direct me somehow I would really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance!

What's your typical intake and exercise schedule right now? Like, can you provide a weekly example of your exercise and an example of a days worth of eating (and be honest about the eating too- make it what a REAL typical day of eating looks like). 

at 15 years old, if you're eating healthy as you say you have been then I don't think you can accurately attribute your weight gain to stress, if you are eating the way you say you are then the 20 pounds you've gained could be due to puberty and NORMAL bodily changes. You are very young, your organs are still developing and weight gain is normal.

That being said, if you'd like to lose weight, which is unadvisable at your age and weight you can work from these amounts...

not exercising AT ALL, NO WALKING NOTHING, you burn 1800

exercising less than 1 hr a day you burn 2200 calories

exercising 1 hour on most days you burn 2400

So, if you want to lose 1 pound a week don't go below 1500...EVER...and if you're doing 1/2 hour to an hour of activity you can eat 1700-1900 calories a day and still lose weight. Hope this helps :)

These recommendations can be found athttp://www.bcm.edu/cnrc/HealthyEating_calcula tor.htm

tryatri- I guess my weekly exercise would be walking and biking about 30 min to an hour about 4 times a week. 

Yesterday:

Breakfast: Cereal with milk and blueberries or a homemade fruit smoothie

Snack: Yogurt with honey, a piece of fruit, sometimes more cereal

Lunch: A sandwich (whole wheat bread) with hummus, some fruit, carrots

Snack: A spinach salad with vinegar (sounds weird, but I had that yesterday)

Dinner: Piece of steamed salmon, steamed broccoli, carrots dipped in guacamole

Dessert: Yogurt with honey

BTW, the above was when I was trying to eat healthy, for the past couple of weeks or so.

chrissy1988-I should have clarified this originally, but the stress led to lack of sleep and bad eating habits. Anyway, thanks for these guidelines! I think I'll try for 1600 calories on sedentary days and 1800 on exercising ones? I hope that's right... I guess within that range.

Hi

It does appear that you are eating healthy, and if you really want to lose some weight, then you are correct you need to keep to your healthy eating habits.
The one thing that you really want to look at is portion size. I am older, (50) but also was stuck with the "I exercise and eat healthy" but couldn't figure out why I couldn't lose weight (which really was fat). I really had to be honest with myself on PORTION SIZE and then nutritional value. I noticed I was not eating enough protein at the time.

I have been using this site now since ony May 1,2009 and not only have I lost weight, I am eating even healthier paying attention to the nutrional value of what I am eating and am starting to feel great.

One final thing, when I started paying attention to doing it more for health reasons to remain healthy than just because I felt i was overweight, it was a lot easier. Being a young teenager, that is what you need to focus on as well, not so much the weight but the health and that will serve you even better.  

This is one of the best sites I have seen in a long time. You can download the task bar and keep count of everything right at your fingertips. I am a firm believer in  doing it the right way, no gimmicks no quick way. Just do it and it does work.

Good luck and keep us posted on your success.

Elaine