Britt's All Over Makeover

[pigeonsoup]

It's not that. you need o find a balance between eating too much and too little. If you eat too little, your body doesn't have what it needs to take care of itself and if it can't, than you won't lose fat, just muscle and other important body tissues. I learned it the hard way and now have very little muscle at all. It's reversible, but you HAVE to eat to take care of your body.

If you want you can PM me, I can help. I've been through a lot with my weight loss, including having to learn all this stuff. 3nodding  

[Stars in my Pocket]

Here is Stars' Novel (my feelings will not be hurt if it's TL;DR):

I struggled with an eating disorder for about 3 years in highschool. It still rears its ugly head on occasion. It is not a road to go down, let me tell you. Fix your eating habits now before they change, that's what happened to me and I don't want to see anyone else go down that road.

You need to eat enough. Before you start worrying about LOSING weight, eat more. Eat until you find an amount that you can MAINTAIN your weight on, first. For 5'4", 150lbs, this should be closer to 1400-1500 calories per day. Increase your food gradually, but do it healthily. 1500 calories is FIVE 300cal meals or variations of that. So have a good breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, and dinner. I usually aim for 300-200-300-200-500 for my meals. Healthy choices, too! No junk. ):

Once you've found a good maintenance number, THEN worry about losing weight: add exercise and cut out ONE snack. Usually I'm not as hungry between breakfast and lunch as lunch and dinner so I cut that out. BAM, 200 calories out. Then, work out for 300 calories a day. This is a run, swim, long walk, or 30-minute circuit session that you put EFFORT into. Do it after lunch, then have a protein-filled snack to recover.

Then you'll have a 500-calorie deficit a day, or 3,500 per week. That's 1lb of FAT gone per week. Not counting the water weight that will drop (3-10lbs) with the metabolism boost. Oh, and drink LOTS of water. A cup before every meal, and then a few extra throughout the day. 3nodding

For your iron, eat spinach, it's chock full of it. And it has like no calories. whee You can put a light vinaigrette (100cals) in a HUGE bowl of spinach and have a 150cal salad. Add a chicken breast, or heck, two, and you still won't hit 500 calories. You'll be full up, too. (:

Sorry for the novel.
TL;DR: More food, smaller meals, 1500 calories a day then do 300 calorie exercise burn and you will lose weight LOTS faster than restricting your intake.  

[Testicular Diabeetus]

Cool beans.
Ii found a calorie calculator it said for a maintenance weight I should eat 1742 cals a day, then for fat loss I should eat 1394 cals a day the for extreme fat loss I should eat 1200 cals a day.

Here is the link to the calculator.
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

Is this right?

Oh what about sodium, carbs and all of that other junk on the nutrition facts label?

 

[Testicular Diabeetus]

I made a new blog thingy it's

Brit's All Over Makeover 2.0

Post there pl0x.

 

[Stars in my Pocket]

I like that calculator. (:

For carbs, proteins, and fats, it's really "how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?" because some people don't count it, others measure everything to the gram.

On the whole, if you're exercising and want to lose weight, you'll aim for 40-30-20, protein-carb-fat. 40% protein, 30% carb, 20% fat.
Which means, for 1500 cals a day, you'd aim for 600 cals in protein (4 cals to a protein gram, so 150 grams protein), 450 cals in carbs (4 cals to a carb gram, so 112-113 grams of carbs), and 300 cals in healthy fats (9 cals to a fat gram, so 34 grams of fat).

That's a lot of calculation, though. So just make healthy choices, then if you feel you need more guidance, structure your diet like that.
It takes a lot of planning to do, though. So just aim to count calories for now, and as a general rule avoid processed stuff like popcorn / 100cal snacks / granola bars (my weakness!) because you can get a whole carrot and a cup of blueberries for 100 calories, or you can get half a Nature Valley Granola bar. So as a general rule, the less that it's been handled by people, the better. 3nodding

If you aim to eat less processed foods, sodium and sugars and such shouldn't really be a problem. (: