What is the female obsession with a 1200 calorie diet?
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I can't tell you definitively... but a celebrity model said something along the lines of, "If you want to weigh 120, you eat 1200... 140, you eat 1400 calories etc." And being depressed and insecure at the time, that made a lot of sense to me... now I know it's a major over simplification and can lead to very dangerous lifestyle if the 'rule' is taken seriously.0
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WELP. OP- what you fail to realize is that BMR is a number in which you use to calculate your TDEE; NOT your baseline for calorie consumption.
For some reason on MFP many people have this assumption that you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES eat below your BMR.
This is untrue; especially for those who are morbidly obese.
MFP does not recommend anyone eat below 1200 calories as this is what nutritionists, physician, etc. deem a healthy amount of calories for the AVERAGE woman to lose weight. This is based on an average. There is no exact science to it other than the fact that this is based on the average woman in the UNITED STATES. For men the lowest they will recommend is 1400 calories per day.
Now why does it suggest 1200 for SO many people? Because SO many people have unrealistic expectations as to how much weight they can and should lose safely. Surely you remember signing up for MFP and it giving you an option on how much you want to lose per week....
now who DIDN'T select 2 pounds per week? Anyone?
For a woman like myself when I first started (i'll use this as an example) I am 5'4 (average height), weighed 136 (average-ish weight), wanted to lose 2 pounds per week.
My BMR was 1,362
My TDEE was 1634
I selected 2 pounds per week or a deficit of 1000 calories.
Thank GOD MFP did not recommend 634 calories.
I lost about a pound a week on 1200 calories. Even now (especially now that I am MUCH smaller) I require less calories overall if I want to be in a deficit. On non-lifting days I burn about 1700 calories and on lifting days about 2100 calories.
Try making a deficit off of that and tell me how many calories you would need to eat....
go on... i'm waiting....
Is 1,200 calories safe for EVERYONE? Hell no, especially MEN, women who are taller, women who have less to lose, women who are much more active throughout the day. For the AVERAGE woman this number is usually close to their BMR and allows them to (should they eat nutritionally dense food) get enough protein, carbs, calories for brain function, and hit their RDA of vitamins. But as you probably also know, RDA of protein is 15% of your diet, and nutritional goals are very very low.
This is why it's so damn important you set up your activity level correctly and you don't go crazy overboard with expectations that you're going to lose weight at the rate that someone 100+lbs your size would.
just sayin... if you have a low amount of weight to lose, you should aim for losing .5 lbs a week.0 -
I thought it was because 1200 cals is MFP's minimum allowed.
^^THIS! There are many women who are older, shorter, etc that eat below 1200 as well, you just can't say it on MFP or you will get reported. 1200 is the safe number to claim. While 1200 is certainly not an appropriate amount for everyone, there are quite a few people that it works for while they are losing weight. You just need to be more careful with HOW you spend those calories, to make sure you get enough protein and other nutrients.
Some people also shoot for 1200, but don't measure everything 100% accurately, so maybe they are actually eating 1300-1400 cals. Aiming for a lower goal gives more flexibility and room for error.
BTW, 20+ years ago, 1000 calories a day was the standard amount to lose weight for most women, so 1200 is more than it used to be.
What I question is why so many people freak out when others choose to eat at that level because it works for them? If it is too few calories for them, they will soon figure it out for themselves.
All of which means you are doing no accounting for the individual and their needs when the tools are readily available to do so and saying "eat this because I say so."
Sorry, but I could not disagree more with this post. 1000 calories was dead wrong 20 years ago, just as wrong as 1200 calories is for 95% of the population today.
Did you miss the bolded words of my post? For me personally, my maintenance is around 1600 cals. I am 49, 5'6", I don't go to the gym 5 days a week. I am the average middle aged woman today. And I say AVERAGE because yes, there are many women on here who lift heavy and are very active, but they are well above average.
1200 gives me less than 1 pound a week. I have lost about 45 of my pounds since the end of Aug 2012. Since I am down to the last 30 pounds, I have bumped up to 1250-1300 a day and am only losing about a half pound per week. So I am looking at another year to get to goal weight.
I DO take in account the individual needs of the user on here. I have never told anyone that they SHOULD be eating 1200 a day. Everyone has to figure out what is best for themselves.
Perhaps I give more credit to people to have the brains to figure out what works for them, rather than assuming that everyone who eats less than you think they should, is an idiot.
I believe there are more than 5% of the people on here that HAVE done their homework and considered their own body's needs and their own situation and found that a lower calorie diet is what is right for themselves. And it is very inappropriate for a group of people on here to say that they are wrong for doing what they deem best for their own self.
Many people have also tried the 1200 cal level, figured out it didn't work for them, and tried something different. But just because it didn't work for them, doesn't mean it wont work for anyone.0 -
Please, I ask for some enlightenment on this issue.
I am older....don't have as efficient a metabolism as a 25 year old and don't have a need (or desire) to eat as much as a younger person. I am not nearly as active as a younger person... I don't have kids to run around after, either. My muscle mass is less because I am losing some to age.
I honestly believe that 1200 should be the minimum. I now have my calories set to 1300 so I stay over 1200 and frequently go slightly over 1300. Before I started here, most of my calories were junk... I wasn't eating a lot of food, just high calorie /carb. So I eat about the same physical amount of food.....just fewer and more nutritious calories.0 -
Here are my stats:
127 pounds, 5'3. I want to lose about 5 pounds. I have a desk job. MFP gives me 1200 calories to lose .7 pounds per week (net, not gross). That is just how it is for some people who may not have too much weight to lose.
I personally use TDEE -20, however, it is not that far off.
I do Stronglifts, so I eat more on my lifting days, and if I am hungry, I eat. But if my goal is to lose weight I have to have a deficit.
If you are doing Stronglifts, why is your goal to lose weight? isn't it more accurate to say your goal is to lose fat and add muscle?
At this point my goal is to lose fat and maintain muscle. This is not unusual..
Not at all. But you say above you wanted to lose 5 lbs. This is not at all the same as losing fat and gaining muscle. What if Stronglifts gets you up to 130lbs and a lower bodyfat. Do you stop lifting to get back down to 122?
In most cases I believe targeting a specific weight is counterproductive, is what I'm saying.
No, my goal at this point is not to gain muscle. You can't gain muscle while eating at a deficit, but you can help to maintain your muscle mass by heaving lifting while you lose. You are right in the sense that if I am happy with my body's appearance and it doesn't match a number I think I want to see on my scale- I will stop cutting and start maintaining, but I do need to lose body fat at this point and you can't just magically lose body fat and make it turn into muscle.
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When I signed on to MFP and entered my goals...it was the magic number that was given to me..1250. I nearly passed out at the thought! I haven't been able to keep it under 1500 on most days and I've lost 48 pounds total so I guess weight can be lost if you eat more! imagine that!
Sounds like you are eating some of your exercise calories then? That is how the site it set up to be used. Congrats on your success.0 -
...I prefer to EAT! Who cares if you lose more slowly? If you eat enough to maintain your metabolism, that is what is going to assure you KEEP it off!
Me too, I very much prefer to EAT! And so I do, I eat my fill on approx. 1300 calories a day. I am not deprived in the least. If I was, I'd up my intake.
And me too, I'm totally okay with losing weight more slowly. My 1300/day works out to me losing about a pound every a week or ten days. (my ticker says joined in April, but I began to lose in February).
I'm hopeful I'll keep it off when I maintain too. I lost weight 20 years ago and kept it off until the last few years, so I'm pretty experienced with maintenance.
I hope you'll keep your weight off too ~ but are you any more certain than the next person? You used the word "assure" and I am not convinced you're absolutely correct.0 -
1200 Calories worked for me!0
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I read somewhere, and I wish I could remember where it was, that you should eat the calories allotted for your goal weight. I haven't tried that, myself, but it does make sense. 0
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I usually avoid all the 1200 Calorie/Low Calorie/Eat More/Starvation Mode debates but ....
The 1200 Calorie originally gained it's foothold because a bunch of "experts" came to a consensus opinion that 1200 calories was the minimum needed in a daily eating plan to provide the basic levels of all the macro/micro nutrients. The number was repeated over and over and pretty much became fact.
It is in many ways true. In the US (and other similar food available nations) if a person maintains a 1200 calorie eating plan they are very likely providing their bodies with the basic adequate nutrition. It is possible to go below 1200 calories and still meet all the vitamin and nutritional needs. There are a few medical and expert supervised (food provided) diet plans that will take the patient down to 900 or 1000 calories a day for a short period of time. It really isn't recommended that most people eat that way on a long term and/or unsupervised basis.
Whether or not 1200 calories is enough energy to sustain a person through their day is another question and that is why you see people saying here that they HAVE to eat more than 1200 to have enough energy to exercise and "lift heavy" and all the other things that active people like to do. That sort of exercise based non-sedentary lifestyle takes more energy than sitting at a desk all day to drive home and sit and front of the tv all evening. The big thing here is how a person feels eating 1200. If they are lethargic, constantly hungry, irritable, showing memory lapses or whatever ... then the answer is likely no 1200calories is not enough and they need to eat more.
However, if they feel good and their weight loss is progressing at a stable pace and they have enough energy to make it through their day at an above slug-like manner - then there is really no reason for them to eat above 1200calories.0 -
I thought it was because 1200 cals is MFP's minimum allowed.
It's this ...... people want to lose as quickly as possible, so they plug in a weight loss goal that may be totally unrealistic. MFP does the math and spits out 1200.
Lots of people with 10 pounds to lose think they can accomplish this in 5 weeks. We've all seen the weight loss ads with rediculous claims.0 -
I think that the "obsession" with 1200 calories, is because MFP has it as a minimum and so many people are given exactly that number of net calories. I believe MFP sets it as a minimum because it's believed to be difficult to get adequate, balanced nutrition if eating less than this. (Although if people are exercising and logging it, they should be eating more than 1200 calories gross).
Some people assume that MFP only sets net calories at 1200 if you set it for a 2lb a week loss. That's not true. MFP deducts 500 calories (from your estimated calorie burn before exercise) if you want to lose a pound a week, and it recommends you lose a pound a week. Obviously, if your calorie burn is 1700 or less before exercise, then you'll be recommended to eat 1200 calories regardless of whether you set MFP to 1lb or 2lb a week. It makes no difference.
What causes the controversy is that 1200 is lower than most people's BMR, and many people will say that you shouldn't eat below your BMR (some say that you shouldn't eat below it in total, some say that you shouldn't net below it). (Of course, for some people, their BMR will be 1200 or less, so this won't apply).
But I do think 1200 comes up so often because MFP tells so many people that that is what they should be eating.0 -
I can't tell you definitively... but a celebrity model said something along the lines of, "If you want to weigh 120, you eat 1200... 140, you eat 1400 calories etc." And being depressed and insecure at the time, that made a lot of sense to me... now I know it's a major over simplification and can lead to very dangerous lifestyle if the 'rule' is taken seriously.
and of course we all know that celebrity models are nutritional geniuses on par with Einstein...0 -
I think it's because MFP automatically puts many people, especially women, at 1200 cals. I am 5'9", 27 yrs old, and when I first filled out the little questionaire thing, it said 1200 cal. I thought that was a little low, but this is a weight loss site so I figured it knew best.... I read a bunch of threads on here that said otherwise, so I changed it.
I think its a serious flaw of MFP and it needs to be fixed.0 -
Note: I am no longer only eating 1,200 calories a day, but I'm answering the answer posed, because that is where I started!
Also noted, this is only my second week on MFP.
1. I transferred to MFP from Weight Watchers. When I did the math on how many points I was eating, it was 1190 per day. So in my head, 1200 seemed 'right.' But then I had to think about the fact that fruits & most vegetables were 'free' of points, and you have 49 weekly points you can eat (I usually ate 1/2), and you earn activity points for exercise. So if I take my 29 points (1200 calories), plus 200 calories in fruits and veggies per day, plus about 160 per day from my weekly points, I was really eating about 1550 per day...but in my head it was 29 points = 1200 calories, so that's what I should eat. There's a lot of former WW people here.
2. I didn't understand (at first) that MFP already calculates a calorie deficit, nor did I know I should target 'net' calories until I started reading this board. MFP set my calories at like 1310, I think? 1200 isn't that much less.
3. I'd never heard of "TDEE" until last week on this message board, so I'd certainly never calculated what mine was.
4. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I actually workout now. I just started month 2 of Insanity today. I'm working out 6x a week, I'm averaging 10,000 steps on my FitBit (office job). But before this last month, the # of times I worked out 6x in a week? Umm, probably 0. So I have a tendency to set my actvity as 'sedentary', which makes my calorie target lower. I mentally need to catch up with what I'm physically doing.
I manually changed my calorie target to 1,500 per day.
My first week on MFP I was 1,556 net calories UNDER that goal. I lost 3.2 pounds.
This week I was 753 net calories OVER that goal (party / vacation weekend). My scale is still UP 3 pounds today.
MFP is set to lose 1.5 pounds, so I should not have gained 3 pounds by eating 753 net calories over, math wise. So I'm still working on finding the balance.
Hopefully those reasons help explain it!0 -
I don't know what your talking about here...
I eat 1700 calories here.
But when I first signed up to MFP it had me at that number.
But that didn't last long.0 -
Nope I don't worry because I know my TDEE right now at my current weight is 2600 calories, so I need to eat that much every day to MAINTAIN my weight. so I bump off 500 calories to lose one pound a week and it works for me. and it's easier to switch to maintenence without your body going into shock
without your body going into shock. :huh:
Yes, shock. You know, when your body is not used to so much calories and all of a sudden you switch to maintenance and dump like 1000 extra a day into yourself after being on a 1200 calorie diet for six months? you're supposed to gradually up your calories and with the TDEE method there is less transition when I eat 2000 calories a day and switch to 2500 to maintenance as opposed to eating 1200 a day and then eating 2500 a day for maintenance.
Eating 1000 extra calories per day will not send a body into shock.
that's your own opinion. But It makes sense that when something or someone has a drastic change all of a sudden there is shock. if your body is usedto eating 1200 and then all of a sudden you are eating almost double it will have a TON of extra energy and the body won't be used to burning it properly. Also, eating so little for MOST people slows down their metabolism a LOT so when they start eating extra calories their body doesn't burn it quick enough.
It's not an opinion. Provide one single example of someone going into shock by eating 1000 extra calories.
Slowing metabolism and extra energy =/= shock (much like capitalizing words =/= truth). Trauma causes shock. 1000 calories is not traumatic.0 -
Heck, my wife is 4'10" and 85 pounds, and her BMR is just below that. Since she works out her TDEE is around 1550. So she needs to eat 350 cals above 1200 just to keep from losing weight.
Yet some women feel that have to eat less than it takes to power my wife's tiny body (in full sedentary mode), when they are larger and work out more than her. Yes, they will lose weight. Physics and logic tell us that. However the big questions are:
Is it safe to do so?
Is it necessary to do so?
Is it sustainable?
The answer to all 3 imho is no.
However, we live in a society that puts way to much pressure on women to fit a certain physical, unrealistic archetype and that is how they are to often defined. It is a lot of pressure.0 -
For the record: 1328 calorie lunch today. Bowl of chili, bag of mixed nuts, dark chocolate.0
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Heck, my wife is 4'10" and 85 pounds, and her BMR is just below that. Since she works out her TDEE is around 1550. So she needs to eat 350 cals above 1200 just to keep from losing weight.
Yet some women feel that have to eat less than it takes to power my wife's tiny body (in full sedentary mode), when they are larger and work out more than her. Yes, they will lose weight. Physics and logic tell us that. However the big questions are:
Is it safe to do so?
Is it necessary to do so?
Is it sustainable?
The answer to all 3 imho is no.
However, we live in a society that puts way to much pressure on women to fit a certain physical, unrealistic archetype and that is how they are to often defined. It is a lot of pressure.
Agree 100%0 -
bump0
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Maintenance is only going to mean an extra 1000 calories a day if you're able to maintain at 2200. I'd pile on the weight at that level! (And that's 2200 before exercise, if you're following MFP). My sedentary maintenance calories at goal are around 1350, I think, so it wouldn't be a big jump up for me, personally. Not that I'm advocating eating only 1200 if you can at all avoid it, but just saying it isn't such a cut for some people as it is for others, so the negative effects presumably aren't so extreme for some as others.0
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Maybe it just isn't cool for people to say they lost weight on 2000 calories a day (but I did!)0
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I eat whatever I need to eat to get my macros and micros in. If it's 1200, fine, if it's 3000, so be it.
*not here to lose weight.0 -
There is an epidemic of undereating on this site, among women AND men. There are men here who eat way less than I do, and some of them are nearly twice my size. I don't understand it at all. People need to figure out that all the crap they are asking their bodies to do can not be done indefinitely if they aren't going to feed themselves properly.
ETA: I regularly eat 1500 to 1600 calories at dinner.0 -
Is it safe to do so?
Is it necessary to do so?
Is it sustainable?
The answer to all 3 imho is no.
See, this kind of thing bothers me. Either something harms you or it doesn't. Opinion has nothing to do with what is safe.0 -
Please, don't make this a gender issue. There are men in this boat too. Hello mirror my old friend.
I did about 1300 to get down to my initial target weight for about 4-1/2 months. I've now ramped it up about 500 calories a day to slowly ease down to the new target. But this is both men and women, old and young, It has nothing to do with gender in the least.
The only thing gender around here is that poor squirrel in your avatar. That just makes me cringe.
And I thought I was having a bad day. 0 -
I have had at least 5 different doctors (all MD physicians) recommend a 1,200 calorie diet. Given my height, frame size, and weight, this is ridiculously, completely inappropriately low for my caloric needs. One pushy, critical doc even went so far as to "prescribe" it for me. The reason why this 1200 number gets pushed is because most people will experience rapid weight loss without being on a "starvation diet" (the average American woman is 5'6"). Most people would lose weight on this calorie level even if they weren't exercising. It is the bare minimum you can get above starvation while still theoretically getting enough nutrients. Obviously someone who is 4'11", 90 pounds, and of a slight frame is going to have lower daily caloric requirements than someone who is larger or more active.
If you tell the average person to just cut calories without any sort of nutrition counseling, this plan is going to backfire pretty quickly unless the patient has a personal interest or hobby in nutrition. People should pick the food plan that works for them.0 -
There is an epidemic of undereating on this site, among women AND men. There are men on my FL who eat way less than I do, and some of them are nearly twice my size. I don't understand it at all. People need to figure out that all the crap they are asking their bodies to do can not be done indefinitely if they aren't going to feed themselves properly.
You know what's odd. You're pretty close to my calorie net.0 -
I think it's because MFP automatically puts many people, especially women, at 1200 cals. I am 5'9", 27 yrs old, and when I first filled out the little questionaire thing, it said 1200 cal. I thought that was a little low, but this is a weight loss site so I figured it knew best.... I read a bunch of threads on here that said otherwise, so I changed it.
I think its a serious flaw of MFP and it needs to be fixed.
I AGREE! I'm 5'0 and about 125 and MFP puts me at 1200 calories for pretty much all weight loss. Well, personally 1200 is just NOT happening for me. I raised mine to 1400 and I eat back my exercise calories. However, the scale has not budged. So, I'm just trying to exercise and weight train more.
Still, the majority of people who use MFP are going to believe what it tells them over some posts in a forum.0
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