Community » Get Advice » Diet and Nutrition » Reaching my daily targets

I really need some advice; I am 5 feet 2 inches tall and my current weight is 140 lbs. I have lost 39 lbs to date. I am having a difficult time reaching my protein, carb and fat daily intake requirements. To be honest, I'm not even sure what I should have my targets set at. I have read that to calculate your daily protein requirement, you divide your weight by 2 and that is how many grams should be consumed.

I eat healthy, well balanced meals everyday & I always exceed the water intake. I make sure to have a protein & vegetables with every meal, I generally don't eat carbs (breads/pasta) after lunch except for the occasional baked white or sweet potato with dinner. I rarely exceed 1000 calories daily; I am not hungry and I do not feel deprived of anything.

I would love any advice or suggestions! Thanks a bunch.

I agree with her assessments and suggestions. We all end up experimenting with targets, I have changed mine several times along the way, but basic caloric needs are hard to keep on track sometimes. It's a shell game, increase one target and another falls short, etc. Get somewhere close to the caloric limit and add a little or subtract a little when taking exercise into account.

Good luck.

Everyone with thrive at different macro-nutrient (carb/protein/fat) ratios. I am right there with Cutcarb as I have altered and tweaked my ratio targets over the years to get to just the right combo for me. It comes down to whose philosophy do you want to experiment with first? Low-fat/Hi-carb? Hi-protein? High-fat/Low-carb? and there is so much advice (zone diet, adkins, paleo, vegan, muscle-building, blood-type) I just keep reading, reading, reading and finding the common ground and experimenting with how my body responds to different foods and ratios. I am currently finding that I thrive on a higher (high quality) fat ratio with lots of fiber but (VERY) limited grains. I am eating mostly whole, real foods and almost nothing from a box or wrapper. I am often not hungry at the end of the day but if I have not had enough calories to offset my burn, I will tend to gain a couple lbs. Also if I have too much fructose or grains I will have a weight spike. So I am trying to get the protein and fat higher and limit carbs while still getting lots of fiber and nutrients. It is still a learning process and lots of trial and error.

One of my biggest challenges is mentally overcoming the bad information we have been given for the past 40 years by our government and big food corps that grain should be our primary source of nutrition. What bunk! And really deadly advice... my health improves daily the more I do the opposite of the conventional nutrition advice out there. Also, following the super low-cal diet advice is a sure fire way to fail at any diet plan.

some good advise below

YAY!! That is sooooo AWESOME!! :D So glad you are feeling good!! :)

Because I do not eat packaged/processed food and I do not use any added sugars (and I limit carbs anyway), I do not worry too much about sugar and sodium targets. If you are eating processed foods, I would set a max sodium target to no more than 2500 mg. Try a max sugar target of 50 g.

let me know how that goes ;)