Petite women, how many calories help you lose or maintain weight?

[QuickPearlFox]

For all my fellow petite women …
how many calories do you eat daily to lose weight? And how many calories to maintain? Actually realise being just under 5ft is damn hard when trying to lose weight and restrict calories

I’m 5’3 and 54 years old. I’ve a busy sedentary job and making time for exercise is hard.

If don’t exercise my basal metabolic rate is 1300-1400 a day. I manage to add an average of 300 cals a day by being really disciplined with exercise (2 gym sessions and one yoga/ Pilates session a week , and 9-10k steps on average a day.) This is all I have time for.

Realistically this gives me 1700 a day maintenance which is shit.

I cut calories where I can. I haven’t eaten breakfast in nearly 3 years. I prob under-eat Mon-Fri to give myself a bit of wiggle room at the weekend if we go out for a meal or see friends. Realistically though everyone else eats steak and I have the fish.

Over the last 2.5 years I’ve lost 6 stone. 2 “naturally”, 4 on Mounjaro. I’m now 10 stone. Losing the last 4 wouldn’t have been possible without WLI- I needed to eat around 1000-1200 a day to lose and even eating that amount my average weekly loss is only 1.2lbs. I worry endlessly about stopping the injections. However without them I was fat for 20 years eating significantly less than my taller peers!

People do not realise how much harder it is being short. Portion sizes when we’re out are the same for me as for my 6’1” husband. He managed to lose 3 stone by cutting out beer (average 8 pints a week over 5 days ), his afternoon biscuit and peanut butter on his toast (he switched to marmalade). I felt quietly aggrieved.

There are some interesting creators around talking about this. On TikTok / Insta there’s “Maggie- petite dietician” who’s very perky and American (and also under 5’) but makes some good points. She focuses on your relationship with food which didn’t work for me initially as I needed to calorie count obsessively, but which is something I’m considering more as I stop my weight loss journey.

Good luck. It’s hard being short….

Agree it’s about 1300-1400. Exercise if 1400.

I’m 5ft 1. 1300 to lose weight. 1500 to maintain.

@geometry dash lite Losing 6 stone—especially while juggling a sedentary job and limited time—is no small thing.
The tricky part now is probably less about “how do I keep losing” and more about “how do I maintain without feeling restricted all the time.” That might mean rebalancing—maybe not under-eating all week just to “earn” weekends, but smoothing intake so your lifestyle feels less like a trade-off.