How many cals to lose 1-2 lbs a week?

ncmc · 09-06-2011 01:09PM #1

Hi all, I am a 32 year old female, 5ft 7, 140lbs. According to my bmr, I should be eating approx 1900 cals to maintain my weight. I would love to get down to 133 lbs, but want to do it in a sensible way to keep it off, so would aim to lose 1-2lbs a week. How many cals would I need to knock off that 1900 daily to achieve that kind of loss?

Ps I would be moderately active exercise wise.

neil_hosey · 09-06-2011 01:15PM

im no expert on this, but just to get ur thread going, i think 1lb is equivalent to 3500 calories.. so you would need a calorie deficit of that 7000 a week to drop 2 a week..

someone might contradict what im saying but i think thats it.

with alot of exercise (calorie burning) and a calorie deficit diet it should be quite easily doable.

SteelyDanJalapeno · 09-06-2011 01:16PM

There's approximately 3500 calories in a pound of body weight,

3500 / 7 = 500, so a deficit of 500 cals a day would equal a pound a week in weight loss,

A better choice in my opinion would be increase exercise even walking, as 500 cals a day is quite a lot and not very substainable and could lead to failure. but if you expend an extra 1500 cals per week in exercise you would nearly half that 500 cals a day deficit needed to lose that pound weekly!

Good luck op,

ncmc · 09-06-2011 01:28PM

Ouch! Thanks for the replies guys, God, no wonder it's so hard to lose weight! I will be ramping the exercise up next week, that will be a 30 min walk most mornings and 3 six km runs a week. That should give me a few extra cals to play with.

Bottle_of_Smoke · 09-06-2011 04:53PM

Horgan wrote: »

There's approximately 3500 calories in a pound of body weight,

3500 / 7 = 500, so a deficit of 500 cals a day would equal a pound a week in weight loss,

A better choice in my opinion would be increase exercise even walking, as 500 cals a day is quite a lot and not very substainable and could lead to failure. but if you expend an extra 1500 cals per week in exercise you would nearly half that 500 cals a day deficit needed to lose that pound weekly!

Good luck op,

To be honest I'd say 1400 cals a day would be very doable. When the poster gets to the target weight she can go back up to 1800 or therebout calories which is definitely sustainable.

1500 calories a week would be a hell of a lot of walking.

Its up to you ncmc but I would say dropping 500cal a day is pretty normal for a diet

VW 1 · 09-06-2011 04:55PM

Yep, just to echo what the above posters have said. 3500 kcals is 1lb of fat. So a defecit of 500 per day on maintainance between exercise and diet will give you a loss of 1lb per week. check out the stickies and stuff for healthy options for snacks/meals if you are having trouble keeping the kcals down on the diet side of things.

How many cals to lose 1-2 lbs a week?

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