how do i know how many calories is maintenance for me

[bennj51189]

how do i know how many calories is maintenance for me? and how much can I safely cut with "over doing it" or i guess under doing it

[Sophist]

hey there. I´m brand new to the forums, and this is my first post. I have gyne and recently lost alot of weight. been afraid to tackle my medical problem for some time, and have kind of suffered alone with it for quite some time. I see from reading this forum that I´ve roughly gone about things in a sensibleish way, only problem is i did too much cardio on an excerise bike for about a month, about 40 mins a day doing roughly 15-20km. My legs have never clicked so much! Now I´ve stopped the exercise, and my diet isn´t excessive, I eat pretty much what I like in relatively moderate portions and the sugars are gone bar natural fruit.
I think i may finally enough money to resolve my surgery privately as i was operated on before with little success from what I can tell, and it has left me still unable to "de-robe" in public.
I wouldn´t mind tightening up the loose skin a bit and maybe toning up before I even think of a consultancy. I don´t really want to gym it, just get it done at home and you guys seem to pretty much know what your talking about. Is their any recommendations to some kind of work out?
also, im pretty new to the states also, is there any recommendations of a consultant or surgeon who specialises in this field, I kind of have a terror of them now and I get paranoid reading about treatments or which private doctors to go to.
Sorry for not posting in a more appropriate thread. One thing at a time right?

[Bolognianips]

If you want to tone your upper body at home, try 3 types of pushups.  Those are; normal, wide armed, and diamond (when your thumbs are touching near the middle of your chest).  For abs, find a nice balance between traditional sit ups, crunches, and leg lifts.  Get a dumbell or two, and do curls with your arms, some military style pressing, and reverse curls behind your head (careful, I've seen people drop weights on their neck).  for your fore arms, get a pice of pvc pipe, about 2 feet long at around 3" diameter, drill a hole in the middle and tie a short rope 3 feet into the hole.  Then tie a weight (it will be a light weight) to the other end of the rope and roll the rope onto the pvc using your hands while bending at the elbows, then change directions of rolling.  You also cant beat a pull up bar, or a sturdy rafter.

This will make you strong, but it will not necessarily give you maximum bulk, most will be lean muscle obtained by many reps.  If you wish to bulk up, you will probably need to go to a gym, and use maximum resistance with minimal reps.

Oh yes, as far a quantity of all of these, its pretty much until you can do no more.  Then take a day off the muscle group you just maxed. so..  Situps, cardio, forarms one day perhaps, then pushups, curls, bicep, cardio the other.