Hope you haven't abandoned this thread..
I'm all about the calories, my diet lives and dies by them!
If you want to work out what calories you should be eating calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate, do it online). You just need to put in your weight, height and age and it will work it out for you. Once that has been calculated multiply it by on of these depending on activity level (i personally only multiply by the sedentary one.. makes me stricter) in order to calculate your daily calorie needs.
If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9
and then for every pound a week you wish to lose you remove 500 calories a day from your daily calorie needs. I advise against going below 1000 though. :biggrin:
Good luck
Ohh as for finding calories for foods, I personally use a "my fitness pal" app on my phone (it tracks my calories per day), but they also have a website. In fact, that website does a similar calculation to the bmr and tells you how many calories to eat in a day to lose weight .
