How much should I be eating

[br7]

Hello,

 

I am a 21 year old male, I am 6'0" and about 219 pounds (I am athletic though). I would like to lose about 20 pounds. I exercise regularly but my eating habits in the past few years have been terrible which led to me gaining a good 20-30 pounds since I stopped playing high school varsity sports.

 

I've never really been on any kind of diet before, I've been put on a few nutrition plans before but they were never really designed to lose weight. I started a diet 8 days ago but I'm afraid I'm not eating close to enough every day. I have been eating strictly low calorie and low fat foods, and I've been doing a good job, but I may be eating even less than I need. Today after adding up my calorie total for the day it was around 800 calories. Had a banana for breakfast, a salad w no dressing and some pineapple and grapes for lunch, and a lean pocket sub and apple for dinner. By the end of the day I had absolutely no energy and now I know why. I know this would be a very unhealthy way to continue the diet so I'm not sure where to go from here. I have stayed away from everything during the past week other than grilled or broiled chicken, fruits and vegetables, and some grains (cereal and some pasta). I'm afraid anything else I'd eat would offset my diet effort. Since I'm new to this I don't know what the best approach to this is. Obviously I need to increase my calories but I'm not sure how. Maybe snack during the day? I just don't want to eat to eat and not lose the weight. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Candied-Heart]

To get the exact amount of calories you need to ingest/expend daily, do a Google search on calorie calculators. There are heaps of them online and they are accurate. Just be honest re: your weight and height and level of activity normally - before you started dieting and exercising more regularly. And you will get the right answer.