Gaining weight

I got weighed at the doctors office the other day. I'm gaining weight, up to 217 pounds. That's bad, really bad.

I've been careful with my carb intake and things like sodium, but I haven't been paying attention to calories. That has to change. I really need to get down to something more like 170. I have to get serious about losing weight.

My hypertension problems are such that I have shortness of breath and lack of stamina so I can't really do more than what they call moderate exercise (30 minutes of physical activity a day). I can do that, but not all at one time, and that about does it for the day for me. At least until I lose some weight and maybe get some stamina back.

I found some guidelines on calories and weight loss.

It says to establish a baseline calorie need for weight maintenance by multiplying your weight by 15. That gives me 3,255. Let's just call it 3,200. Then they recommend a target loss of 1-2 pounds a week by reducing the maintenance level by 500-1,000 calories.

So they suggest I should target between 2,200 and 2,700 calories per day. Of course once a lose a couple of pounds I can progressively lower that calorie target.

Okay, I'll start counting calories.