Team Skinny (July 2010) Let Freedom Ring

I have been pretty intense with daily exercise of about 30-40min and daily calorie counting to keep the weight coming off rapidly.   I think that a average of 1.5-2lbs per week is doable if you stay really consistent with both exercise and counting calories.  

Over the last 4 weeks, I went from 214 to 206.  I only missed one day of exercise and stayed under 2000 calories all but a few days.  To maintain weight for me is about 2,700 calories.  Some days I was as low at 1500, most days were around 1700 and a few times I went a little over 2000.  I think the 1500 is too low for me and I started to up the calories the last week to be more around 1800 to 1900 daily.

3500 calories is 1lb.  So it is just a matter of math.  For me, I am working on a 700-1300 calorie deficit each day.  At 1300 calorie deficit, it takes 2-3 days to lose 1lb for me but that deficit is not realistic everyday.  So to lose 2lbs you need to have a deficit of 1000 calories per day.  That is doable if you exercise everyday and burn 250-500 calories a day exercising. 

You want to be careful not to put your body into a mode where it thinks it is starving and then it will want to pack on the weight once you go off the diet..

If you are doing longer and more intense workouts than what I described, you will probably have to up your calories to have the energy to complete them.

I am using Sparkpeople to count calories.  That may be helpful to you. 

Hope this helps you.