Does anyone have a good, trustworthy "Daily Caloric Need" formula for me?

I tried the generic ones like at cnn.com and webmd.com and the numbers were HUGELY different.

Then I tried one at a high performance athlete trainig site and that number was on the high side.

I am 5 Foot 1 Inch
185 lbs (I'm overweight by all means)
33 year old female.

On the low end of the scale, one calculator told me 1800 is what I burn every day just to live + digestion and my light exercise life.

ON the high end (the pro athlete) had me at 2600 for meto, digestion and the Sedentary program. I thought 2600 was way high of what i would need to eat to maintain.

Here is what I have done. The first 10 is carloies needed to sustain my body mass, the second 10% is Digestion, the 20% is activity level

(My weight x 10) + ((myweight x 10%)+ (myweight x 20%)) = Calories needed to maintain current weight. (this formulat gives me 2442 a day to maintain)

What does anyone think of this? Does this sound like a reasonable formula? Anyone have any other ideas. I need a good idea of what I need to sustain so I know how much to cut to promote a healthy, slow, weight reduction.

Thanks

Tiffany, unfortunately, there is no reliable caloric calculator, except for the in-build one:
Calorie counting or Hunger?


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams

Tiffany,
Have you tried the one at the Mayo Clinic?

[www.mayoclinic.com]

It came out to 1750 to maintain, cautioning that any special needs could alter the estimate.

Rawgosia,

The Mayo Clinic notes the basis for their calculator as --

"Credits: Based on Harris Benedict Equation and Dietary Reference Intakes, Institute of Medicine (IOM), 2005. Adapted by Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research."

- sounds like a hybrid formula.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2010 02:03PM by loeve.

I ran the numbers again at the Mayo Clinic site and this time came up with 1900 calories/day, and if going by the DRI site the standard deviation would be 1900 +/- 160 calories [www.nap.edu] .

The Dietary Reference Intakes website has a chart showing the energy needs of all types and ages (at least of their study groups) --

[www.nap.edu]

Tiffany, according to this chart, your sex and age group ranges from about 1600 to 3600.

My sex and age ranges from 2800 to 4200. Wow, that seems like a lot.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2010 08:37PM by loeve.

Hey thanks! I hadn't seen the Mayo clinic one... 1900 a day sounds WAY more realistic!

I do realize that eating when hungry is the proper way, but I have abused my body so much for so long, my counter seems to think I'm hungry all the time. It is slowly getting better and one day I hope to be able to trust it fully. Eating when I wanted, what I wanted is how I landed in this awful predicament. I'm trying to develop some better habits (again) .