Wendy Dryden 's Journal, 09 April 2015

Yes - FS tends to over estimate calories. Maybe start with 1500 and see if you can lose weight - if not, go down 50 calories each time until you do lose. 

Wendy--hope you are feeling better. Can you ask your Doc what they suggest for calories? You want to be careful if you are fighting an infection. If you want to get an average for calories, try checking out different sites to see what they say and take an average. I try to stay at 1200 or below. I'm not sure if that's good or not, but it sounds right to me. LOL. I need to take my own advice, right? 

Yes, RDI's on here are high. Start at 1500 if you are more comfortable. It's always better to start high and lower it as you lose weight. The less you weigh, the less calories you need to keep losing.  

I base it on incremental weight lost of 10 pounds. If my current weight is 200 and I want to loose 10 pound I drop my calories to 1900. When I reach 190 pounds, I drop to 1800 calories until I reach 180. Next goal is 170 pounds drop calories to 1700. The formula prevents you from going into starvation mode and prevents you from being hungry and loosing the weight too fast. You did not gain it overnight and it will not come off overnight no matter how little food you eat. Too little food and you set yourself up to binge eat junk. Eat healthy (lots of fruits and vegetables) and you will be shocked how much food you are allowed to eat. I don't change the calories regardless if I am exercising or not. This has worked for me in the past and that is what I am back to doing. Good luck HBC.  

I think 1600-1500 would work great for starters and see how that goes and adjust from there  

Most of us have figured that FS gives you 300 too many calories. 

I agree with the other posts...FatSecret does give us too many calories, especially for those of us who are not on major exercise programs. I have learned the hard way that not eating enough calories will stall and make your body believe that it is starving. I am in that funk right now as we are working too late to eat supper and I am not eating enough calories throughout the day so my body thinks that Gwen is starving. I am planning to up my calories with more fat and veggies this weekend when I have time to cook. I also will be planning my meals in advance as I notice that if I wait, I don't eat enough. I haven't found the magic number for me yet so can't recommend something to you. I would just start at about 1500 and see where it goes. Atkins is a wonderful program but you have to experiment a bit to find what works for you.