Daily Calories

I use an online food/fitness tracker (livestrong.com), and based on my gender, age, height, weight, and daily activity level, and how many pounds I'm aiming to lose per week, it calculates how many calories I should be consuming each day. Based on my choice to lose about 2 pounds per week, the site recommends that I take in about 1080 calories a day (This number fluctuates, depending on my weight. Therefore, if I lose more weight, and I'd still like to lose the same number of pounds per week, the number of calories I get allotted for each day will decrease.). I've read here and there that consuming less than 1200 calories a day is not healthy, because it puts you into "starvation mode." I also know that there are different opinions about whether "starvation mode" is the appropriate term to use, since "starvation mode" refers to the mode that people get into when they actually are starving from lack of food. There have also, of course, been differences in opinion as to whether the commonly used term "starvation mode" actually even exists for dieters. Perhaps it doesn't even exist, and we can survive on a very small amount of food? *Sigh* I don't know.

In addition to tracking my food intake, I also track my fitness accomplishments for the day. Depending on what type of exercise and how much of it I do, the site also subtracts the number of calories burned from number of calories consumed, resulting in NET CALORIES for the day. Since 1080 calories per day is a really small number, I don't think I've ever eaten that little; instead, I've probably eaten about 1200~1300 calories a day. Subtract number of calories burned from that, and sometimes my NET CALORIES equals less than 1000 calories, maybe around 700-something calories.

Now, my question is, should I be aiming to consume less calories than I currently am consuming? I know that the online tracker is not 100% accurate with its calculations, since nothing is perfect. Moreover, many times I have to guesstimate the number of calories in a certain meal that has not yet been added to the archives. I ask this question because although my net calories have been pretty on target (or have been hitting less than 1080) each day, my weight loss has been moving at a REALLY slow ("Is the scale even moving?") pace.

I'm gonna try out a couple things... For one, I'm gonna try to cut out more unnecessary carbs from my diet. In addition, I'm really gonna cut down on the pastries. I've tracked all the calories for the pastries, but I'm sure they're not doing anything to help me out. Maybe I already know the answer to this question, but I just want some input from other bloggers out there who may know a bit more about this stuff.

I do have some pictures of food and other things to write about, so I will post another quick update (with some pictures) at a later time!