ADVICE & HELP NEEDED!! I Changed My “Diet plan” =/ …?

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Question by —: ADVICE & HELP NEEDED!! I changed my “diet plan” =/ …?
So, at first my goal was to lose 20 lbs
go from 145 lbs to 125 lbs

I started by eating around 1000-1200 calories a day (all healthy food, nothing proccessed)
and burning about 500 through exercise

according to an online calculator i needed to eat 2357 calories to maintain my weight of 145

so therefore my calorie defecit was around 1500/day

following this, i lost 6 lbs in less than 2 weeks (most of it may have been water weight)
which appararently is dangerous and only temporary

so i was talking to my mom, and she told me that 125 was an unreasonable goal and that I should try to maintain between 137-138 to be healthy. after much arguing, we decided that I should try to attain 132lbs

So I have 6 weeks before school starts and I right now I’m around 140 lbs. I need to lose 8 lbs, (roughly 1.5/week, instead of 3/week like before)

I was wondering if I maintained my exercise (burning 500 calories/day), how much should i increase my eaten calories by to lose those 8 lbs?

Any advice, tips, help appreciated thanks

and btw, I’m 16 years old, female, 5’6, 140 lbs

and sorry for the novel

Best answer:

Answer by Hannibal the Cannibal
Yes, your mother is right. A lot of people hear “calories in, calories out” and start doing what you’re doing, but there’s a flaw in there that they’re unaware of. Let me show you how a calorie deficit works.

For your age, gender, height, and weight, your basal metabolic rate (calories burned daily if you did absolutely nothing at all but sit and watch TV) is roughly 1500 calories. That’s how many calories your body will use just doing things like pumping blood, regulating body temperature, processing food, processing waste, thinking, breathing, replacing skin cells, blinking, growing hair, you get the idea. If you take away calories from this, it puts you in a situation where you are denying your body calories (aka, starving yourself), and your body will not appreciate this. It reacts with things like eating up muscle mass and leaving the fat cells, hoarding any food you eat as fat, not repairing tissue as well as it should (hair thins and falls out, skin yellows and flakes off, nails become brittle), experiencing fatigue, trouble concentrating, passing out, etc.. So, if you were to eat 1500 calories a day (your BMR) and burn 500, you’re only giving your body 1000 calories when it needs 1500 just to function. See why that’s a problem? The body can go below the 1500 sometimes, but it’s not something that you want to keep up for any long amount of time, and the weight lost in that time will be temporary.

So how do you create a calorie deficit properly? There are websites that will help you with this…they calculate the BMR and then add calories based on how active you are. I calculated your average caloric intake for being very active, and it listed 2023 calories per day. This is the amount that you should eat if you want to stay the same weight. But you’re trying to lose weight, so ditch about 300 calories and you’ll be fine. This is a sustainable way to lose weight, and you have a low risk of gaining it back.

Of course, these are general numbers. Everyone is different and you’ll have to experiment. Keep with your proper diet of not eating any processed crap and adjust the numbers every few weeks to see how your body responds. Remember, weight isn’t a destination…health is a lifelong goal. Don’t forget to change up your exercise regimen. Email me what you’re currently doing…that may need tweaking as well!

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