So I’ve put on quite a bit of weight. About 10 pounds, which is a lot to me.
Not having a car made it impossible to go to the gym, so instead of finding exercise elsewhere, I decided to say “fuck it” and neither exercise nor refrain from gorging on chips and candy all day every day.

Now that I’m finally mobile again, I’ve decided to restart dieting and exercising. I’ve created a goal for myself, 115 lbs by May 11th (my birthday).

Here are some steps to calculate how many calories you should be taking in and burning off:

• BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) Calculation: Based on your height, weight, and age, you figure out how many calories you burn just by doing nothing.
• Harris Benedict Equation: Based on your amount of regular physical activity, you then multiply your BMR by a certain number in order to get your total number of calories burned daily. I work on my feet 5 days a week and do moderate exercise minimum 3 days a week, so I multiplied my BMR by 1.55.
• Calorie Intake to Lose Weight: A rule of thumb for calculating this is by reducing your total number of calories burned daily by 15-20%. Of course, if you have more or less extreme goals you can always adjust this number accordingly.

My numbers are:

• My BMR is roughly 1,400 calories per day.
• 1,400 calories x 1.55 = 2,170 calories per day, after activity.
• 2,170 - (2,170 x 0.2) = 1,736 maximum calories per day, after activity, in order to lose weight.

1,736 is really high compared to what I’m used to consuming. I’ve been sticking between 1,200 - 1,300, so that is about a 58% deficit. In my case, only a 23% deficit each day is what I need in order to lose 1 lb per week. Assuming there will be some days in which I skip the gym and/or binge, I think 91 days (about 13 weeks) is more than enough time to reach my goal. If I was to stick to my plan completely, I could reach my goal in probably a month.

I want to be able to go to the DMV on my birthday to get my license renewed and be able to change my weight from 124 to 115. :)