1200 Calorie Limit No matter what settings?
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At 1200 cals you should lose a pound a week without exercise, it's set to 1200 because that's the minimum cals you need to nourish your body otherwise you're playing with your health and not getting the nutrients you need for your body to function (basically damaging your body to lose weight is like chopping off a leg to get to goal). The only way you can increase the loss is by exercise but you will need to eat some of those exercise cals back ideally. 1 pound a week really is the max you should be aiming for, I'm aiming for 0.75 - 0.5 pounds a week and I'm 20 pounds from goal and 2 inches taller.
Trust me when I say slow and steady wins the race, it's not worth losing lean body mass trying to get to goal quicker you'll shoot your metabolism in the foot and it'll be harder to keep the weight off. Good luck. xxx3 -
It doesn't seem right that you got exactly 1200 for .5 lb loss at your stats. It makes sense for 1 lb or higher because MFP has a minimum recommendation of 1200 and you are not very overweight.
Your maintenance probably is around 1600 though if you are sedentary. If it says your maintenance is 1680 eating anything below that should result in weight loss over time. You could subtract 250 and enter 1430 for your custom calorie goal to lose about .5 lb a week. See how that goes. You could gradually drop to 1200 but it may be easier to start around 1400.
Remember to log exercise and eat some of the exercise calories.
Actually looking back at my diary entries from the last 9 days, I only ate 1200 calories once. Yesterday. Most days I am under, and I never eat back the exercise calories.
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animatorswearbras wrote: »At 1200 cals you should lose a pound a week without exercise, it's set to 1200 because that's the minimum cals you need to nourish your body otherwise you're playing with your health and not getting the nutrients you need for your body to function (basically damaging your body to lose weight is like chopping off a leg to get to goal). The only way you can increase the loss is by exercise but you will need to eat some of those exercise cals back ideally. 1 pound a week really is the max you should be aiming for, I'm aiming for 0.75 - 0.5 pounds a week and I'm 20 pounds from goal and 2 inches taller.
Trust me when I say slow and steady wins the race, it's not worth losing lean body mass trying to get to goal quicker you'll shoot your metabolism in the foot and it'll be harder to keep the weight off. Good luck. xxx
I do have some exercise in my diary, but not nearly as much as I would like. Time is a premium.
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What's your current height and weight? This might solve your question if you let us know.0
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xchocolategirl wrote: »What's your current height and weight? This might solve your question if you let us know.
I am 5'3". I started logging 4/4/2017 with a starting weight of 158. I was 153.8 yesterday. I am not sure there is a problem specifically. I just thought it was odd that the number did not change with different settings0 -
So you lost 5lbs in a week?0
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indigoblue9572 wrote: »So you lost 5lbs in a week?
4 in 9 days, I guess. But I was 154.8 today. I am drinking tons of water today though to flush out any salt causing water retention.0 -
JacobNicolaus wrote: »I was playing with the settings and I get a 1200 calorie limit if I choose .5 lb a week or 2 lbs a week. How is that possible? It does not seem to make sense. Is this a flaw in the apps calculations?
I think the reason MFP puts 1,200 ccal as an absolute minimum is because that's the smallest amount of calories you can eat and still be healthy.
That's not true. I set mine below that and I am very healthy. Not every single person needs the same "minimum" calories. MFP uses this number because there is this fear that someone will not use common sense and actually eat too few calories for their individual needs. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is not an absolute.0 -
fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »JacobNicolaus wrote: »I was playing with the settings and I get a 1200 calorie limit if I choose .5 lb a week or 2 lbs a week. How is that possible? It does not seem to make sense. Is this a flaw in the apps calculations?
I think the reason MFP puts 1,200 ccal as an absolute minimum is because that's the smallest amount of calories you can eat and still be healthy.
That's not true. I set mine below that and I am very healthy. Not every single person needs the same "minimum" calories. MFP uses this number because there is this fear that someone will not use common sense and actually eat too few calories for their individual needs. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is not an absolute.
How do you set your calories to be less?0 -
fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »JacobNicolaus wrote: »I was playing with the settings and I get a 1200 calorie limit if I choose .5 lb a week or 2 lbs a week. How is that possible? It does not seem to make sense. Is this a flaw in the apps calculations?
I think the reason MFP puts 1,200 ccal as an absolute minimum is because that's the smallest amount of calories you can eat and still be healthy.
That's not true. I set mine below that and I am very healthy. Not every single person needs the same "minimum" calories. MFP uses this number because there is this fear that someone will not use common sense and actually eat too few calories for their individual needs. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is not an absolute.
How do you set your calories to be less?
Manual calorie goal.0 -
Regarding exercise: can you go for a walk or do a video in the morning before work? How about when you come home in the evening while dinner is cooking? Maybe do a walk before bed. As it warms up, late night walks are a favorite for me. My husband and I walk the dog and enjoy the evening air.0
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xchocolategirl wrote: »What's your current height and weight? This might solve your question if you let us know.
I am 5'3". I started logging 4/4/2017 with a starting weight of 158. I was 153.8 yesterday. I am not sure there is a problem specifically. I just thought it was odd that the number did not change with different settings
How much weight are you trying to lose? If you have less than 20 I think 0.5 pounds rate of weight loss would be more ideal. I am one pound more than you and it gave me a new calorie intake of 1520 calories with this goal. When I wrote lose one pound it had me at 1270. A pop-box will display stating this Will update your information ensure to click on "yew"
What calorie option popped up when you went on the 0.5 pound lost option?0 -
fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »JacobNicolaus wrote: »I was playing with the settings and I get a 1200 calorie limit if I choose .5 lb a week or 2 lbs a week. How is that possible? It does not seem to make sense. Is this a flaw in the apps calculations?
I think the reason MFP puts 1,200 ccal as an absolute minimum is because that's the smallest amount of calories you can eat and still be healthy.
That's not true. I set mine below that and I am very healthy. Not every single person needs the same "minimum" calories. MFP uses this number because there is this fear that someone will not use common sense and actually eat too few calories for their individual needs. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is not an absolute.
How do you set your calories to be less?
I would NOT recommend setting it for less, you're not an extreme outlier that needs to eat less than 1200 calories.7 -
Are you trying to eat less than 1200 calories op?0
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Christine_72 wrote: »fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »JacobNicolaus wrote: »I was playing with the settings and I get a 1200 calorie limit if I choose .5 lb a week or 2 lbs a week. How is that possible? It does not seem to make sense. Is this a flaw in the apps calculations?
I think the reason MFP puts 1,200 ccal as an absolute minimum is because that's the smallest amount of calories you can eat and still be healthy.
That's not true. I set mine below that and I am very healthy. Not every single person needs the same "minimum" calories. MFP uses this number because there is this fear that someone will not use common sense and actually eat too few calories for their individual needs. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is not an absolute.
How do you set your calories to be less?
I would NOT recommend setting it for less, you're not an extreme outlier that needs to eat less than 1200 calories.
^^This^^ Eat 1200 until you can increase your activity level which will allow you to eat more. This process takes time, you can't rush it. You're doing great so far, just keep it up!1 -
fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »JacobNicolaus wrote: »I was playing with the settings and I get a 1200 calorie limit if I choose .5 lb a week or 2 lbs a week. How is that possible? It does not seem to make sense. Is this a flaw in the apps calculations?
I think the reason MFP puts 1,200 ccal as an absolute minimum is because that's the smallest amount of calories you can eat and still be healthy.
That's not true. I set mine below that and I am very healthy. Not every single person needs the same "minimum" calories. MFP uses this number because there is this fear that someone will not use common sense and actually eat too few calories for their individual needs. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is not an absolute.
How do you set your calories to be less?
Please don't follow this advice. That some people are insistent that you can eat below the recommended minimum amount and be healthy does not mean this is a healthy approach for everyone (or maybe even anyone). Your stats suggest that a HIGHER calorie goal would be more appropriate for you than a lower calorie goal. You shouldn't be aiming to lose more than 1 lb/week and the numbers that MFP has given you suggests that 1200 NET would provide those results. After losing 5-10 lbs (if you are aiming to shed the 30 you recently gained) you should change your goal to 0.5 lbs/week which would have you at around 1450 NET.
Also, you mentioned you haven't had time for purposeful exercise but your comments above suggest a pretty active lifestyle. You mentioned having a FitBit, what is your average day's step count? What does FitBit say your total calories burned are? Based on your very preliminary results, some of which may be water weight, it's possible that you may have a higher maintenance level than MFP estimates.
For what it's worth, I'm 5'2 and lost > 30 lbs eating between 1600-1900 cals. My TDEE in maintenance is 2200. That's with a desk job. So it's entirely possible to eat well more than 1200 cals and achieve your goals, and if you can, why would you not want to?4 -
fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »JacobNicolaus wrote: »I was playing with the settings and I get a 1200 calorie limit if I choose .5 lb a week or 2 lbs a week. How is that possible? It does not seem to make sense. Is this a flaw in the apps calculations?
I think the reason MFP puts 1,200 ccal as an absolute minimum is because that's the smallest amount of calories you can eat and still be healthy.
That's not true. I set mine below that and I am very healthy. Not every single person needs the same "minimum" calories. MFP uses this number because there is this fear that someone will not use common sense and actually eat too few calories for their individual needs. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is not an absolute.
I've seen you post this a lot, but I'm not sure that I ever see you clarify your age? I believe the basal metabolic rate naturally declines with age, and what you may need at your current age may not reflect the calorific needs of someone younger. For example, it would be quite irresponsible for my post-menopausal, sedentary mother to insist my 23 year-old cousin could healthily eat as little as she does herself.
Additionally, I'm not sure @JacobNicolaus meant what you thought he meant. Nutritional needs for health aren't confined to calories. I have seen it mentioned elsewhere that the 1200 figure was originally calculated by nutritionists as an absolute minimum because they didn't think it was realistically possible for a woman to restrict her calories further than that and still meet her other nutritional needs, i.e. macromolecules, vitamins (inc vitamins that need dietary fats for absorption), essential minerals.
In this context, whether you need less than 1200 calories isn't very relevant. Whether you are meeting your other needs on that might be relevant, but the most important thing is would other people meet their other nutritional needs easily?
I would say either no, or only with very careful planning. As this is a site for general use, by people who are not accredited in nutrition and who don't have a stable of sports nutritionists, personal chefs and dieticians at their disposal, it's a good, safe thing that MFP has the baseline set at 1200 and won't automatically generate a goal lower than that, however unrealistic a goal you input.8 -
HeliumIsNoble wrote: »I have seen it mentioned elsewhere that the 1200 figure was originally calculated by nutritionists as an absolute minimum because they didn't think it was realistically possible for a woman to restrict her calories further than that and still meet her other nutritional needs, i.e. macromolecules, vitamins (inc vitamins that need dietary fats for absorption), essential minerals.
Just for the record, a "nutritionist" is not held to any kind of standard and requires absolutely no qualifications whatsoever to apply that label, so what they say about nutrition is about as relevant as what an astrologer says about mental health.0 -
This is true, and something I should have mentioned myself. However, I am talking about nutritional data collection and analyses done before the post-millennial everyone-is-self-employed-as-a-nutritionist era, back when the only people who called themselves nutritionists were, er, extremely qualified to do so.heiliskrimsli wrote: »HeliumIsNoble wrote: »I have seen it mentioned elsewhere that the 1200 figure was originally calculated by nutritionists as an absolute minimum because they didn't think it was realistically possible for a woman to restrict her calories further than that and still meet her other nutritional needs, i.e. macromolecules, vitamins (inc vitamins that need dietary fats for absorption), essential minerals.
Just for the record, a "nutritionist" is not held to any kind of standard and requires absolutely no qualifications whatsoever to apply that label, so what they say about nutrition is about as relevant as what an astrologer says about mental health.3 -
spiriteagle99 wrote: »Regarding exercise: can you go for a walk or do a video in the morning before work? How about when you come home in the evening while dinner is cooking? Maybe do a walk before bed. As it warms up, late night walks are a favorite for me. My husband and I walk the dog and enjoy the evening air.
No. I refuse to get up earlier than my current 5 am. I have to be at work early. My evenings are consumed with running. We almost never eat at home because I can't cook. Plus housework. We do hike on the weekends. I am in bed early also.0
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