Should you work out while on a 1200 calorie diet??

MKEgal

tkouns2015 wrote:

I am on a 1200 calorie a day diet (sic) and have been told you shouldn't workout (sic) while on this diet (sic)? I feel like I can loose (sic) more if I add in exercise! I love to be active! I have lost about 13 lbs so far in 22 day (sic)! Need to lose 25 more

You should ask whoever put you on this diet (your doctor? dietician?). Probably they'll say yes, you should exercise, but make sure it's OK for you.

If you're just a regular person who's come to MFP hoping to lose weight, then get the "I'm on a diet" idea out of your head. Diets are temporary. Once you're "off my diet" you'll go back to how you used to eat, and you'll get fat again. If you want to make a permanent change, make better eating habits & exercise regularly.

30 min of cardio will maintain your weight. To lose, you'll want to do more, possibly twice that. Cardio is the most effective way to burn calories. Weightlifting will have you looking fabulous once you lose the fat, because your muscles will be toned, so keep up with that. (If you don't like going to the gym, google body weight workouts.)
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tkouns2015 wrote:

My age is 39 will be 40 first of April! I am 5'2 1/2 , weight right now is 149 I started at 162 my goal is 125 to 130! I love to fast walk outside or I go to the gym and do 30 mins cardio and then weights on all parts of the body on different days! Mostly I do cardio tho, gym days are few and far

Going by BMI a healthy weight for your height would be 105 - 130. So your goal is reasonable.

But with a goal of losing only 30 lb you're losing too fast. 4 lb a week could be healthy if you'd started out more than 100 lb overweight (I've managed it a couple of weeks), but you should be aiming for 0.5 lb, and as you get closer to goal that will slow to even less, maybe 0.25 lb.

My doctor & dietician told me to eat 10x my healthy goal weight in calories & ignore exercise calories. I started off doing that (1700), but as I lost weight & hit plateaus, I adjusted calories down by 50-100 at a time, so now I'm about 300 cal under the "10x goal weight" idea (1400). Usually ignore exercise calories, and it's been working for me.

The reasons for ignoring exercise calories:
most people underestimate what they eat
most machines (including MFP) overestimate calories burned
For most people, most of the time, those more or less cancel out.

Here's a newbie help post where I compiled links to helpful info, including sexypants (which was already posted... go read it now, then come back here), realistic goal setting (weight, calories, macros), accurate food logging/weighing, motivation, etc.

MKEgal

psulemon wrote:

I would recommend macros around 40% carbs, 30% fats and proteins.

That's outside of a healthy range for carbohydrates (too low).

Here's a table which explains the healthy ranges:
http://www.iom.edu/Global/News%20Announcements/~/media/C5CD2DD7840544979A549EC47E56A02B.ashx

page 1, carbs, 45 - 65% of calories (4 cal per gram)
page 2, fat, 20 - 35% of calories (9 cal per gram)
page 4, protein, 10 - 35% of calories (4 cal per gram)

psuLemon

MKEgal wrote: »

psulemon wrote:

I would recommend macros around 40% carbs, 30% fats and proteins.

That's outside of a healthy range for carbohydrates (too low).

Here's a table which explains the healthy ranges:
http://www.iom.edu/Global/News%20Announcements/~/media/C5CD2DD7840544979A549EC47E56A02B.ashx

page 1, carbs, 45 - 65% of calories (4 cal per gram)
page 2, fat, 20 - 35% of calories (9 cal per gram)
page 4, protein, 10 - 35% of calories (4 cal per gram)

Considering protein and fats are essential macronutrients and carbs are not, there is no reason to not deviate from "those" standards. There really are no adverse affects from going lower than 45% as long as you don't have a medical issue or a binge issue.

Also, that link doesn't provide any evidence against it.