Calories 5 yrs out/49 year old woman

Just curious if anyone has gotten sound guidance on how many calories are really needed for weight loss? I dont trust the online TEE calculators.. I think they're too high. I'm 49/ woman.. peri meni I think.. and I'm 5 years out sleeve. I have 40 lbs to lose .. I'd love to lose 10 at this point.

If anyone has gotten professional input on this I'd love to hear it.
Thanks!

Your sense about the TDEE (and BMR, basal, or resting, metabolic rate) calculators is correct - you can't trust them. They are good at telling us what our metabolism should be but not what it actually is. Unfortunately our trip through obesity land means that ,our metabolism often isn't what it should be, which is why it is usually so difficult to lose weight. Our WLS should help to correct that to varying degrees, depending upon procedure, technique and individual quirks.

A professional will gauge your metabolism in a couple of different ways. Typically a nutritionist may use a body composition scale, or its analog, a pair of handles that you grip to determine your fat mass, lean mass, etc., from which can be derived a BMR figure, which can be only slightly better than the online calculators, as it still uses mathematical algorithms based upon averages of normal people. There is also a Vox test that can be done where you breath into a device and it determines your metabolic rate from your respiration, but it too, is algorithmically based upon normal people, but is it is more individualized.

The best method that I have come up with to get your individual needs is to track your intake for a couple of months, with MFP or one of the other tracking apps or programs, and take your average daily intake (which hopefully is relatively consistent.) Is your weight stable in that time; gaining, losing? If it's stable then you have a decent ballpark figure for your own total metabolism, and you can work from there. Classically, if you can cut 500 calories per day from that figure, that should lead you to an average loss of about a pound a week, or five pounds per month. If your metabolism is way off, then you may not lose quite that fast, but it gives you a reference point. My metabolism wasn't too bad when I was losing after my VSG, as I was losing around 10 lb per month at about 1100 calories per day as I was nearing goal weight, which works out to my total metabolism being somewhere around 2100. Sure enough, as I ramped things up to go into maintenance, I wound up right in the 2000-2200 calorie range. YMMV, but it does give you a ballpark reference point.

Good luck on bringing it back down,

Wow! I had my VSG done by Dr. Robert Rabkin in 05!

What if the answer was not that you needed to restrict your calories, what if the answer was you got to partner with your beautiful brain and learn to listen to your amazing body and what it actually needed, in terms of food?

Especially with menopause coming in hot. (ha!) The fuel we use to lose, is typically the fuel we need to use to stay there.

What if the answer was learning about how things drop into a brain, how they show up in a body in a feeling sense, and the behaviors a human uses to cover up those feelings?

What if you learned the skill of noticing where your nervous system gets hijacked and how to redirect the the clouds of thought that drop into your brain and then CHOOSE a behavior that is in alignment with what you really really really want? Which is the pride, satisfaction or just the plan ol freedom of not having to think about/judge/compare your body?

For me, menopause was the most beautiful invitation to see that what I thought about things, where I let my mind settle and spin - all of this changed everything down stream. Because my mind went ******g WILD.

For The Beloveds reading in - its the same with the drinking, spending, being mad with your partner, having fury with the world. All of the things we use against us, it starts in our minds - and, while brains are gonna think **** like hearts are gonna pump, we have a choice of what we let sit in there, spin around, change our body chemistry, and alter our behavior.

Imagine being able to trust your body. Imagine not having to outsource your sense of what is right to a professional or even need to suspect an on-line calculator.