1200 calories/day is SO HARD, can anyone share their meal plan?
ht1211
Posts: 26 Member
I'm 5'1, 32, female, and I'm 15 lbs away from my goal.
The first 12 lbs took me 4 months. And I actually gained 5 of those back, and spend another month and a half to get rid of it. So I've been going at this for almost 6 months now, and I'm getting vey impatient.
I'm having a lot of problem staying within the 1200 calories/day diet. The only time I could do it is when I did a lot of exercise, so I have extra calories to work with. But I can't exercise that much everyday, and on the days I didn't exercise enough, I can't seem to stay in my calorie goal. Part of the problem is that I don't want to keep eating the same stuff everyday.
Does anyone have a good 1200 meal plan that's simple to follow?
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack...
Any idea will help.
Thanks
The first 12 lbs took me 4 months. And I actually gained 5 of those back, and spend another month and a half to get rid of it. So I've been going at this for almost 6 months now, and I'm getting vey impatient.
I'm having a lot of problem staying within the 1200 calories/day diet. The only time I could do it is when I did a lot of exercise, so I have extra calories to work with. But I can't exercise that much everyday, and on the days I didn't exercise enough, I can't seem to stay in my calorie goal. Part of the problem is that I don't want to keep eating the same stuff everyday.
Does anyone have a good 1200 meal plan that's simple to follow?
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack...
Any idea will help.
Thanks
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Replies
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How is a meal plan going to help if you don't like like to eat the same stuff every day?
Is it possible that 1200 cals is too low for you then?0 -
1200 is probably too low unless you are morbidly obese or have serious complications from your weight that are more dangerous than the negative effects of a VLCD monitored by a physician.0
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So eat more then you will stop putting weight back on because you didnt stick to it? Why dont you go up to 1400 or something?
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I aim to eat 1500 a day and I can't really do anything for 12 weeks as I've broke my wrist but in the last two weeks I've lost just under 6lbs and all I've been doing is squats
Breakfast weetabix or strawberries with low fat yogurt
Lunch apple orange boiled eggs or cream crackers
Tea tuna salad, steak and veg, omelette
That's what I aim to eat anyway with snacks inbetween such as nuts, and belvita biscuits to top my calories up this is more-less my diet plan. It's working for me at the moment
It just depends what you can eat and what you can't eat0 -
Hi, I'm just a shade over 5 foot and quite sedentary. I have my doctors approval to do 1000 calories and under. Feel free to send a friend request and browse through my food diary. The weight isn't exactly falling off as my maintenance calories aren't far above that, but I am losing a little. Been logging for 30 days. I do better when I get close or above my protein, especially if I get it early in the day.0
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That's interesting
I'm 5'2. My weight loss seemed to slow down on 1,200 calories a day.
So for the last week and a half I've tried the 5:2 diet. 2 days of 500 calories ( essentially Weetabix for breakfast and Weetabix for supper) and then 1,500 calories other days
I don't know how long I'll do this for, but for now it seems to have kick started me back into losing0 -
Hi.
I'm 5'3 and I aim for 1300 - 1400, that being said my losses are much slower than for the first ~15 lbs - I have ~15 to go. My diary is open, feel free to take a look. Generally I eat cereal and yoghurt for breakfast (250 - 300 calories), Salad, soup or a sandwich for lunch (300 - 500 calories) and then protein and veggies for tea (400 - 500 Calories). Plus some snacks.
I tend to eat slightly more at the weekends.
Flissy0 -
I'm 5'6 and i've been eating 1200 a day since may this year and have lost 47lb. I generally have just a latte for breakfast (never been able to stomach food early in the morning) but for the amount of calories i have you could have a cereal bar, 2 slices of weight watchers bread toasted with light butter or something similar around 150kcal and a piece of fruit. For lunch i have either a wrap with lots salad and a few slices of ham and light ceaser salad dressing, or a sandwich, with a packet of velvet light crisps and a time out choc bar, then for dinner you can have almost anything as long as you weigh food into proper portions and bulk it out with salad or veggies, and most importantly dont deny yourself anything, its ok to cheat every now and then if say you go for a meal with friends or fancy a naughty treat, as long as you stick to your plan for the rest of the week, some days i cant even fit in enough food to make my calorie goal as im so full, hope this helps 0
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icypinkkisses wrote: »I'm 5'6 and i've been eating 1200 a day since may this year and have lost 47lb. I generally have just a latte for breakfast (never been able to stomach food early in the morning) but for the amount of calories i have you could have a cereal bar, 2 slices of weight watchers bread toasted with light butter or something similar around 150kcal and a piece of fruit. For lunch i have either a wrap with lots salad and a few slices of ham and light ceaser salad dressing, or a sandwich, with a packet of velvet light crisps and a time out choc bar, then for dinner you can have almost anything as long as you weigh food into proper portions and bulk it out with salad or veggies, and most importantly dont deny yourself anything, its ok to cheat every now and then if say you go for a meal with friends or fancy a naughty treat, as long as you stick to your plan for the rest of the week, some days i cant even fit in enough food to make my calorie goal as im so full, hope this helps
This is great advice, im having the same problem as the OP - thanks!
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I try to be approx. 1200 when I'm dieting, except I do a fair bit of exercise, so take more when I need to. Plenty of veg and protein works - if I don't do that I end up feeling hungry. You can see my food diary for the last 10 days I've been logging again0
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http://www.rebootwithjoe.com/category/blog/recipes/juice/
This really works and i am keeping the weight off
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I'm 5'1, 32, female, and I'm 15 lbs away from my goal.
The first 12 lbs took me 4 months. And I actually gained 5 of those back, and spend another month and a half to get rid of it. So I've been going at this for almost 6 months now, and I'm getting vey impatient.
I'm having a lot of problem staying within the 1200 calories/day diet. The only time I could do it is when I did a lot of exercise, so I have extra calories to work with. But I can't exercise that much everyday, and on the days I didn't exercise enough, I can't seem to stay in my calorie goal. Part of the problem is that I don't want to keep eating the same stuff everyday.
Does anyone have a good 1200 meal plan that's simple to follow?
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack...
Any idea will help.
Thanks
I know you're fairly petite, but the real question is, how quickly are you trying to lose that final 15lbs?
I'm not sure what your BMR/TDEE is, but it might be worth looking into. With so little weight to go, you're likely already at or near a healthy range for your height and frame, which means that you need to lose slowly to do it in a sustainable manner. The closer you get to your goal weight, you should be moving gradually towards maintenance calories.
I know you're already fed up with how long it's taken, but the reality is, you didn't put on the weight this quickly and you need to take it off slowly unless you want to just yo-yo diet for the rest of your life. With 10-15lbs to go, most people are losing around 0.5lbs per week, 0.75lbs at most.
That being said, you should develop your own meal plan that includes foods you love that are filling; think high fiber veggies and the like. One of my favourite lunches is half an acorn squash with a bit of margarine, salt, and pepper with a small portion of lean meat. It's probably one of the most filling lunches I make.
Avoid things like liquid foods -- smoothies for example. While they can have good nutrition, they often just end up being high in calories without leaving you with the full feeling that food you actually chew and digest from solid will.
Also, look into foods like greek yogurt (individual servings are about 100cals depending on your brand) and skim/1% milk cheese strings. Likely, at 1200 calories, you've been neglecting your protein which has left you feeling unsatisfied and hungry.0 -
I'm probably about where you are - 5'1, 15-20 lbs left to lose. 1200 calories has me losing 3/4 of a pound a week, so bumping it up wouldn't give me more than a hundred extra calories to play with. Which is why I exercise nearly every day ;-)
I find that when I focus on protein, I feel much more satisfied. An egg+egg whites+cheese for breakfast. A protein smoothie for dinner (a thick one with greek yogurt, a banana, chocolate protein powder and pb2 is my go to. But then again I don't mind eating the same thing every day). I also fill my plate full for vegetables, which are low calorie but high volume. If I have 15 cherry tomatoes cut in half, that's 30 pieces of food I get to put in my mouth and savor, which fills up my meal time.
Also, on days where I don't exercise and am thus bound to stay around 1200, I don't eat bread. I'm not anti bread. It's just not worth the calorie amount and doesn't help me stay satisfied.0 -
How aggressively is your goal set? Also, can you open your diary?0
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I'm using Optifast (very low calorie program, as recommended by my Doctor - 800 calories per day) as I've lost weight well with this in the past. I've found that when I've kept really tightly to the Optifast guidelines (that is, no milk in tea or coffee, really strict adherence to allowed/restricted foods), the diet has been easier to follow and I feel less hungry. I wonder if that's because I've gone into ketosis more effectively and so am burning fat to keep hunger pangs at bay. Even milk in tea/coffee seems to make the diet harder to follow... although the coffee definitely tastes better! In my 'real life' I'm a complete carbs addict, so this was quite a strange discovery for me. Just a thought...0
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It's so hard to be short -- so few calories to work with! I'm 5'3" and still significantly overweight, but I've lost nearly 75lbs (slowly...over 2.5 years) netting about 1400-1500 cals/day. If I go down to 1200 I'm so hungry it's just a recipe for failure. For me a lot of it has to do with what I eat rather than how many calories. I try to get plenty of protein, fiber, and healthy fats and I find I'm less hungry that way. I try to save 200 cals for an evening snack...keeps me from grazing too much at night. I also try to burn about 1000 cals/week with exercise so I have a little extra to work with. For me that means running 3 times a week and doing some weight training.0
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This.Liftng4Lis wrote: »How aggressively is your goal set? Also, can you open your diary?
I am 5'3 and have around 15-17 lbs to go. I am eating to lose .5 lbs a week and was given 1520 calories by MFP.
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This.Liftng4Lis wrote: »How aggressively is your goal set? Also, can you open your diary?
I am 5'3 and have around 15-17 lbs to go. I am eating to lose .5 lbs a week and was given 1520 calories by MFP.
Those extra two inches give you a lot more. Using MFP calculations, 5'1 sedentary around this weight (I'm assuming 130 lbs) wouldn't lose anything at 1500 calories.
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I'm confused. Are calories your only limit or are you on a special diet that limits what you can eat?0
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SusanjaneClark wrote: »I'm using Optifast (very low calorie program, as recommended by my Doctor - 800 calories per day) as I've lost weight well with this in the past. I've found that when I've kept really tightly to the Optifast guidelines (that is, no milk in tea or coffee, really strict adherence to allowed/restricted foods), the diet has been easier to follow and I feel less hungry. I wonder if that's because I've gone into ketosis more effectively and so am burning fat to keep hunger pangs at bay. Even milk in tea/coffee seems to make the diet harder to follow... although the coffee definitely tastes better! In my 'real life' I'm a complete carbs addict, so this was quite a strange discovery for me. Just a thought...
Ugh! This is horrible advice.
OptiFast (Dr. supervised) should be reserved for the morbidly obese. OP is not anywhere near morbidly obese.
OP - I agree with others. Yes you are petite.....but the over riding factor is your age. You are young....you can eat more and lose weight. Petite senior ladies may qualify for 1200.
Why would you want to lose weight more slowly? To keep lean muscle mass & lose a higher percentage of fat. The closer you are to goal, the higher risk you are for lean muscle loss.
If you can't exercise much that's another thing working against keeping lean muscle. Try add some resistance training if you can. That signals your body....hey I'm using those muscles.0 -
You're pretty short, and depending on what you weigh, 1200 isn't unreasonable. My daily goal is also 1200 but I usually eat back exercise calories too. On days that I don't exercise, and that I actually meet my goal (which I agree is hard!!), here's what my meals look like.
Breakfast - a couple cups of coffee + low-fat milk plus either a fried egg or a spinach/fruit/bit of protein powder smoothie = ~150-200 cals
Lunch - either a big spinach salad with chopped bell peppers, 4 oz of grilled lean meat, and balsamic vinegar, or a reasonable portion of healthy leftovers, or a Lean Cuisine / 6" Subway sub in a pinch = ~250-350 cals
Dinner - my FAVE is a big plate of oven roasted veggies (dice and toss broccoli, asparagus, beets, or brussel sprouts with a little olive oil and a lot of garlic, bake at 375 for ~20 minutes, broil for a couple minutes, HOLY GOOD!) plus 4 oz lean grilled meat, or some homemade veggie-rich stew or soup = ~400-500 cals
Snacks - apple, mini sweet peppers, snap peas, carrots, low-fat string cheese, Laughing Cow cheese wedges, raw almonds, etc = ~200 cals
Total = 1100 - 13500 -
Maybe consider alternate day fasting. I find it easier to alternate 500 calorie days with unrestricted, 2000+ calorie days than to hit 1200-1400 for months on end. There are three good books on the health benefits of ADF. Look for Johnson, Mosley and Farady authors on the topic.0
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365andstillalive wrote: »I'm 5'1, 32, female, and I'm 15 lbs away from my goal.
The first 12 lbs took me 4 months. And I actually gained 5 of those back, and spend another month and a half to get rid of it. So I've been going at this for almost 6 months now, and I'm getting vey impatient.
I'm having a lot of problem staying within the 1200 calories/day diet. The only time I could do it is when I did a lot of exercise, so I have extra calories to work with. But I can't exercise that much everyday, and on the days I didn't exercise enough, I can't seem to stay in my calorie goal. Part of the problem is that I don't want to keep eating the same stuff everyday.
Does anyone have a good 1200 meal plan that's simple to follow?
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack...
Any idea will help.
Thanks
I know you're fairly petite, but the real question is, how quickly are you trying to lose that final 15lbs?
I'm not sure what your BMR/TDEE is, but it might be worth looking into. With so little weight to go, you're likely already at or near a healthy range for your height and frame, which means that you need to lose slowly to do it in a sustainable manner. The closer you get to your goal weight, you should be moving gradually towards maintenance calories.
I know you're already fed up with how long it's taken, but the reality is, you didn't put on the weight this quickly and you need to take it off slowly unless you want to just yo-yo diet for the rest of your life. With 10-15lbs to go, most people are losing around 0.5lbs per week, 0.75lbs at most.
I agree with this. I'm at a low amount left to lose and .5 a week is what I aim for. It doesn't feel like a lot but I feel like it's safer. If it takes a little longer, so be it.
If you set your settings to lose a pound a week, it's just forcing you to be down to 1200 a day when you should be higher. I've got 8 pounds left (could stand a little more though) and mine is around 1400 a day. That works for me. Some days a net under with my exercise. Some days I net right around it with exercise (meaning I'm eating 1500-1600). It's easier to maintain and I don't feel restricted.0 -
I'm 5'3" with 1250/day. I try to exercise every day to get a couple hundred extra calories. I also try to get protein in the morning - my diary is open so have a look, it's boring but it's getting the job done so far 0
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I'm 5'1, 32, female, and I'm 15 lbs away from my goal.
The first 12 lbs took me 4 months. And I actually gained 5 of those back, and spend another month and a half to get rid of it. So I've been going at this for almost 6 months now, and I'm getting vey impatient.
I'm having a lot of problem staying within the 1200 calories/day diet. The only time I could do it is when I did a lot of exercise, so I have extra calories to work with. But I can't exercise that much everyday, and on the days I didn't exercise enough, I can't seem to stay in my calorie goal. Part of the problem is that I don't want to keep eating the same stuff everyday.
Does anyone have a good 1200 meal plan that's simple to follow?
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack...
Any idea will help.
Thanks
Protein with every meal eg.
Breakfast
50g muesli
No fat yogurt
Snack
banana
Lunch
Salmon/tuna/baked chicken and salad
Snack
Carrot and low fat cheese
Dinner
Meat and veg
Currently doing it myself. It's not hard when you think of the end goal.
Good luck!0 -
You're pretty short, and depending on what you weigh, 1200 isn't unreasonable. My daily goal is also 1200 but I usually eat back exercise calories too. On days that I don't exercise, and that I actually meet my goal (which I agree is hard!!), here's what my meals look like.
Breakfast - a couple cups of coffee + low-fat milk plus either a fried egg or a spinach/fruit/bit of protein powder smoothie = ~150-200 cals
Lunch - either a big spinach salad with chopped bell peppers, 4 oz of grilled lean meat, and balsamic vinegar, or a reasonable portion of healthy leftovers, or a Lean Cuisine / 6" Subway sub in a pinch = ~250-350 cals
Dinner - my FAVE is a big plate of oven roasted veggies (dice and toss broccoli, asparagus, beets, or brussel sprouts with a little olive oil and a lot of garlic, bake at 375 for ~20 minutes, broil for a couple minutes, HOLY GOOD!) plus 4 oz lean grilled meat, or some homemade veggie-rich stew or soup = ~400-500 cals
Snacks - apple, mini sweet peppers, snap peas, carrots, low-fat string cheese, Laughing Cow cheese wedges, raw almonds, etc = ~200 cals
Total = 1100 - 1350
+1
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You can add me and look at my diary if you like. I usually aim to do 1200-1500. I eat a lot of soups for dinner/lunch that I make in the crockpot which are usually low in calorie but really filling. My snacks include yogurt, fruit, Kashi/K bars and breakfast is usually oatmeal or a green smoothie.0
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I've been eating 1200 calories for two months. It's not easy, but it works. You can look at my diary if you want; it's open.
Eating fewer carbs and more protein and fat helps me not be distracted by hunger. I do feel mildly hungry a lot. That sensation probably has to be OK with you if you want to eat at a 1200 cal. level.
I'm 5'8' tall and I'm 59 years old. Lightly active. I don't log exercise unless it's the kind that leaves me seriously out of breath, like an uphill bike ride. If I do log exercise, then I usually eat extra calories.
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Have you calculated your TDEE? With only 15 lbs to lose you likely have set too aggressive of a calorie deficit.
I am 5'2 and lose 0.5 lb/week netting around 1650 cals. You can likely eat more than 1200, still lose weight, and have better luck adhering to your plan.0 -
I have lost weight consistently by eating 1200-1400 cals a day. This dieting alone helped me lose about 20lbs of post-pregnancy weight, then I did it along with exercise and lost 20 more. Now I am in the high range of a normal weight BMI so in order to lose more I am back to exercising in addition. But if you have a lot of weight to lose, you should lose doing this even without exercising a lot. Here's a sample meal plan of mine-
BREAKFAST
Coffee & creamer- 30
1 egg, 1 cheese slice, 1 100cal slice of bread- 260
or
1 oatmeal with honey- 150
or
1 banana & 1/2 oz almonds- 160
SNACK
1/2 oz Almonds (about 13)- 80
LUNCH
Frozen entree or soup- 200-400
SNACK
1 square of dark chocolate- 50
1 cheese stick- 50
DINNER
Small plate of meat, veggies, cheese, grain- 200-500
SNACK
Popcorn with fresh parmesan melted on top- 140
or
1 cookie- 75-130
or
Slice of cheese- 80
or
Protein shake with unsweetened almond milk- 140
Some combination of these usually keeps me between 1100-1450 calories a day. Most days I am right at 1200, I let myself go up to 1400 some times. I never aim for less than 1200, but if i'm not particularly hungry it happens.
What I eat during my after dinner snack solely depends on what I ate earlier in the day. If I had a big dinner I may skip the after dinner snack entirely.
I never feel super hungry...and usually by the time I am hungry, it is time for my next snack or meal.0
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