UK Calorie Recommendations To Increase?

Well, I am 20, and weigh 128lbs at 5'7". I work out about 5x weekly, at least 2 hours each session. I find myself needing more than 2,000 to maintain. I think I take in at least 2,500 daily. But I don't count calories religiously... Some days I eat about 1,200, some days I eat more - depends on how hungry I am.. but I don't think the recommended calorie requirement level should be increased. What difference would it make because the ignorant people who has no clue what a calorie is would probably eat more, and people who knows the basic concept of calorie would know that everyone burns different amount of calories depending on their activity level and body size and would've used those calculators found on the internet anyways...

So yeah, I think it is useless to increase or do anything to the "2,000 calories a day" guideline. If anything, the suppliers should just be honest to the consumers and tell us what junk is in that processed package of food energy they're trying to push to us.

so people are getting fatter and they want to increase the "recommended" caloric intake requirements, but then say "oh but that's only if you exercise enough"

...riiight. like they were doing that previously. I don't think many are following the old recommendations anyways, because if they were, things would be a lot different.

To me, this is completely counterintuitive. The 2000 cal/day figure was created back when people WERE a lot more active. Now that most people are more sedentary, I would think they'd revise the number to be lower. I'm 5'3" and 105 lbs, but I'm active. I maintain on about 2,400 calories a day, but if I were very sedentary, I'd have to eat only about 1500-1600 calories per day to maintain my weight. So yeah, let's just give people MORE of an incentive to eat more and get even fatter...makes PERFECT sense.

The calculator's estimate of my maintenance level of calories is way off - Maintenance: 2325 Calories/day - I LOSE at that level of calories....my maintenance level of calories is much higher!

I agree with what everyone else has said - maintanence level of calories varies and is based on way more than just gender! For me, I'm not sure exactly what my maintanence level is, but I know that I lose about 5 pounds a month when I eat around 2,100 calories a day. I am pleasantly surprised to see that others have similarly high calorie ranges - calorie calculators always seem to give me way too low a range - when I first started counting calories and tried to stick to a 1,200-1,550 range I got so hungry I lost all my energy and was no fun to be around!

I also agree with the idea that people either are clueless about calories, or they know enough to realize that everyone's caloric needs are different. I have read that obese people tend to seriously underestimate the number of calories they've eaten. If someone who is obese and THINKS they're eating 1,200 calories a day but are really eating double that see these recommendations, nothing good can come of that!

I think the idea of "daily recommended caloric intakes" is very misleading to most people. I understand the need to give some guidance, but I think encouraging individuals to experiment and discover the amount of calories they should eat daily for weight loss or management.