Daily Calorie Allowance

Numbercruncher

I am very confused as to what I should be having in order to lose weight and appreciate your advice. I have been doing weight watchers and when I input my daily food into a calorie counter (17 points worth) it only came to 1150 calories. Now when I put my details into a calorie counting site (nutracheck.co.uk) It said to eat 1400 daily and burn approx 200 cals in exercise daily to lose approx 2lbs a week. Yet when I use the detail in G'em's stick it says approx 1700.
My weight loss on WW has been slow, 1/2lb, 1/2 lb and 1lb my first 3 weeks even though I have been doing a lot of exercise and sticking to my points. Friends have been saying maybe I am not eating enough?
I am very confused now as to what I should be doing, I am female, 10st 4 and 5ft 1.
Any advice for me?

g'em

All of the calorie allowance calculations are approximations and everyone will vary slightly. I know weight loss can be frustrating when it goes slowly - but at the end of the day, you still are losing weight!

The more active you are, the more lean muscle you will be likely to have and the more calories you will tend to use up just by doing nothing (you'll have a higher metabolism). So effectively any of those calorie estimations could be right - it depends on you as an individual.

First things first - what types of food do you eat each day? How do you make up those 17 points and what times during hte day do you eat?

Numbercruncher

I know, I'm happy just to be losing weight but when people keep telling you different things it gets a bit head melting!!!
I generally have the following:
Bfast: Shredded Wheat, semi skimmed milk (8.30am)
Lunch: turkey/Ham Sambo & fruit or sometimes beans on toast (1pm)
Dinner: Chicken stirfry with veg & noodles/basmati rice or lean meat with baked potato & salad. (6pm)
Snack - snack a jacks or fruit (some days about 3pm but not every day)

I have cut out most processed foods & crisps/choc. I am trying to move over to brown rice/bread but still have white bread most days.

g'em

Numbercruncher wrote:

I have cut out most processed foods & crisps/choc. I am trying to move over to brown rice/bread but still have white bread most days.

That's a good start, and now you need to take it to the next level The white breads and rice are really not going to do you any favours at all. They're nutritionally void, unsatisfying and will leave you more likely to snack and over-eat. Now what you want to try and do is encourage your metabolism to work to it's best and give your body foods that will provide plenty of nutritional goodness whilst giving it as little reason as possible to store excess.

Shredded wheat is ok, but have you tried porridge or eggs for breakfast?

Instead of sandwiches try salads

Stirfry's are great but ditch the rice altogether and fill up on vegetables and meat.

Introducing small handfuls of nuts instead of Snack a Jacks will provide you with good fats (esential for fat loss!) and try getting some oily fish (salmon, mackerel, tuna steaks), flax or walnuts in for Omega-3 oils (another kind of really, really healthy fat).

Essentially your diet is very carb-based. If you were exercising a lot each week at a very highintesnity you'd more than likely get away with it, but the majority of people just don't need that many carbs every day, and your bdoy ends up storing the excess as fat very rapidly.

Numbercruncher

I am a bit of a carbaholic!! Will have some salad for lunch over the next few weeks and hopefully that will help. Not a huge veg eater at all but have been forcing myself the past while and am beginning to enjoy it.
Thanks for your advice, makes a lot of sense, never realised Rice was bad for you and have been eating it a lot instead of potatoes! Will have to try ditch both of them!

g'em

Numbercruncher wrote: »

never realised Rice was bad for you and have been eating it a lot instead of potatoes! Will have to try ditch both of them!

It's not necessarily 'bad' for you, but people tend to eat too much rice in a single portion (Chinese take-away portions for example contains at least 4 regular servings) and similalry would eat two or three decent sized potatoes in each meal. You don't have to cut them out entirely, but don't eat them every day. As with everything, moderation is key

Vegeta

Salad and veg are legendary

I was looking at a little box of cheery tomatoes at home this morning and realised that I'd have to eat roughly 100 of them to equal a 35 gram bowl of porridge with 150ml of milk.

lovin salad and veg these days.

g'em

Vegeta wrote: »

Salad and veg are legendary

I was looking at a little box of cheery tomatoes at home this morning...

Sorry, couldn't resist. Grammar nazi and a fitness nazi... there's no hope for me

blah

Those little cheery tomatoes always bring a smile to my face

Vegeta

g'em wrote: »

Sorry, couldn't resist. Grammar nazi and a fitness nazi... there's no hope for me

What they were really cheery, you should have seen the smiles on their little faces.