1200 calories

JackieFernandez87

Hi all- just wondering if anyone else gets around 1200? I have mine set to 1260 (lose 1 lb) per week. I’m 5’2 and 165. I’m pretty inactive except for the two days I work each week and I am on foot all day. I do maybe 3 workouts (light) per week. For anyone else is in this calorie bracket, how do you manage to stay within your daily calories? Do you plan and track ahead? I find if I don’t track my dinner ahead then I never have enough calories left for it after breakfast and lunch.

janejellyroll

I would personally change my goal to .5 a week in your situation. 1,200 is the lowest goal MFP will generate. If you do decide to stick with it, make sure you're logging your exercise and including those calories on the days you are more active.

cmriverside

If you get some purposeful exercise you can add it to the Exercise tab and it will allow you to eat a little more. Also, if you set yourself to "Sedentary" that's likely not necessary. Try "Lightly Active" - no one is actually sedentary if they have any kind of job, go to school, or take care of kids or a house. That will give you more calories.

1200 is really hard. You could set it to "Lose 1/2 pound per week" and see if it gives you more. (It may, it may not.)

Regardless, you'll have to find a way to make it work, exercise is my suggestion. When I was losing, that's the only way I could make it work. For me exercise not only gives me a couple hundred extra calories, but it blunts my hunger.

I would think you could lose on about 1500 plus exercise calories. No matter what, you'll have to play around with it for a while and make it work. 1500 is WAY better than 1200.

Good luck! Welcome. :flowerforyou:

tinkerbellang83

Are you actually sedentary, sedentary in MFP is only around 3000 steps per day. You also want to be looking at the average for the week in terms of your non-exercise activity level, so even if you are sedentary, but you're very active on those 2 days, consider popping yourself up to Lightly Active. That will give you a few more calories.

Also don't forget to eat your exercise calories back from those workouts (50% is a good starting point for the first few weeks until you can get an idea of how accurate your numbers are).

JackieFernandez87

Thank you! Good idea.

JackieFernandez87

Thank you everyone! I don’t think 1200 is sustainable for me right now. If I’m too hungry I know I will quit! I changed to lightly active and lose 0.5 lb instead and it’s much more reasonable.

cmriverside

Yay, that's good!...and it's entirely possible you'll find yourself losing faster than 1/2 pound per week. But if you are so hungry that you can't or won't stick to a really low goal (like1200) and you give up - well, that isn't the solution!

Log food as accurately as you can and give it a month to see how that new goal works. It may still be too low or it may be too high. In a month you can play with it, but you need about that long to collect enough data to know, and as a woman - to go through an entire menstrual cycle, which messes with weight.

230137isntmyweight

I'm also 5'2" and set to sedentary but I wear a FitBit and eat my exercise calories back. I'm around 1600 a day this way.

irasgirl

230137isntmyweight do you find that you are losing weight this way. I am really short- 5 foot even and I am always worried about eating the wrong calorie content due to my size.

AnnPT77

irasgirl wrote: »

230137isntmyweight do you find that you are losing weight this way. I am really short- 5 foot even and I am always worried about eating the wrong calorie content due to my size.

That's what the "try it for a month" advice is about.

No one else's experience is going to translate exactly into what you should do.

Think of actual individual people's calorie needs as being on a bell curve. Among people of the same size/age/activity level/etc, most will have calorie requirements fairly close to one another (around the peak of the bell curve), but a few will be far, and occasionally very far, from that common calorie-needs range - either high or low.

If we ask people's individual experiences, we could be getting input from someone anywhere on that bell curve (and if they're a different age, activity level, current weight, height, etc., there's literally no reason to expect their experience to be relevant at all).

Best strategy: Use a "calculator" (really an estimator) like the one in MFP. It will spit out the average calorie needs for someone of your characteristics as your goal, and most people will be close to that value, so probably you will be, too. But then, stick with it for 4-6 weeks (at least one full menstrual cycle for women of that age), and adjust based on your actual, personal results.

Even fitness tracker devices only estimate calorie burn. It's a personalized estimate, but in no way do those devices measure calories. They, too, can be wrong.

Use the starting value from MFP or another calculator. Then get some experience, and adjust based on your personal experience data.

alabastermama

Hi! I’m 5’4 264 lbs (down from 282), was very sedentary when I started. MFP automatically set my calories at 1,240. I keep it there because some days I’m not active, especially with the stay-at-home orders. Once my job open back up I will be more active everyday. I need to lose at least 100 lbs more to get to where I’m comfortable. Infelt my very best when I weighed around 160 over 30 years ago. Will be 55 in less than 6 weeks.

yirara

alabastermama wrote: »

Hi! I’m 5’4 264 lbs (down from 282), was very sedentary when I started. MFP automatically set my calories at 1,240. I keep it there because some days I’m not active, especially with the stay-at-home orders. Once my job open back up I will be more active everyday. I need to lose at least 100 lbs more to get to where I’m comfortable. Infelt my very best when I weighed around 160 over 30 years ago. Will be 55 in less than 6 weeks.

Congratulations on your success. However, MFP did not put you at 1240 automatically. You got this number based on the weekly loss you've chosen in combination with size, weight, age and gender.

Love_2_Hike

I'm on 1200 calories. I eat 4 x 300 calorie meals per day. I generally meal prep, this week I'm having:

1)High protein yoghurt, berries/fruit, cereal/muslie - Coffee
2)Protein (ham/chicken/tuna), salad wrap. Add cheese/cottage cheese/hummus. Fruit.
3)Homemade veggie soup & mini naan bread
4) Roasted vegetable risoni salad with fetta. Grilled Chicken.

amummystale

I'm an inch taller than you, accidentally ate around 1,200 calories today (my goal is 1,500) and was about ready to eat my own face before my husband made me a snack

nationalvillage3215

I am exactly your height and weight and have been on a 1200 calorie diet since January. I also walk 5-7 miles per day weather permitting. So far I have lost 21lbs. Key for me is pre-planning and logging all of my meals. Each morning I start planning my meals starting with Dinner because it is usually my highest calorie meal. Then I make all other food choices around that to stay within the calorie limit. I also have to stagger my eating through out the day to deal with my hunger. It is key to remember, as everyone says, weight loss is not linear so expect fluctuations of plus or minus 2lbs. I look at the 30 and 90 day reports to keep my spirits up that indeed the curve is going down. Good luck and be patient!

cmriverside

nationalvillage3215 wrote: »

I am exactly your height and weight and have been on a 1200 calorie diet since January. I also walk 5-7 miles per day weather permitting. So far I have lost 21lbs. Key for me is pre-planning and logging all of my meals. Each morning I start planning my meals starting with Dinner because it is usually my highest calorie meal. Then I make all other food choices around that to stay within the calorie limit. I also have to stagger my eating through out the day to deal with my hunger. It is key to remember, as everyone says, weight loss is not linear so expect fluctuations of plus or minus 2lbs. I look at the 30 and 90 day reports to keep my spirits up that indeed the curve is going down. Good luck and be patient!

This is going to catch up to you as you approach a healthy weight. You can get away with under eating for a while. Are you older? Completely sedentary outside of your walks? Are you eating Net 1200? (So, eating more for exercise, the way this site is intended to be used?) How are you tracking food? Using a food scale? It's possible you're eating more than you think. 1200 is really difficult - and with all that walking I find it hard to believe you aren't feeling the effects of under eating.

Pay close attention to your moods, irritability, sleep, concentration, ability to get through the day without fatigue...1200 works until it suddenly doesn't. Hair loss, skin and nail problems...and that's just the part you can see.

It was at about four months of 1200 that I hit a wall and had all kinds of symptoms. I still had 30 pounds left to lose. I am five inches taller than you, but I was also eating back my exercise calories.

zoes2797

I started cutting down on what I ate properly around 5th March when I was leaving New Zealand as I was starting to feel unhappy with my size. I have always been slim but could see I was gaining weight from eating out sometimes 5/6 nights a week in NZ! I have been a size 10 in clothes since I was around 13 (I'm 23 now) but could see that these were now becoming tight.



I started this app and put my calorie restriction to 1630 calories a day, as that was the reccomended intake for someone of my height and weight (I was approx 10 stone 9/10 and my height is 5'11)

What I hate most is about how bloated I can get, it seemed like for years I would constantly look pregnant by the evening and everythign would feel so much tighter. Restricting how much I ate has improved my bloating SO much.

I could tell by the end of the two week trip that i had coming back from NZ that I had lost a bit of weight, but was surprised when I found out that I had lost nearly 9 pounds in the space of just under 2 and a half weeks. I was incredibly impressed and happy.

Then when lockdown started, I knew I wouldnt be exercising half as much, so I decided to start intermittent fasting, and only eat between the hours of 12pm and 6pm (usually, if i don't eat until 1pm then i allow myself to eat til 7pm etc). I find it easy in the morning as I'm not a breakfast person, and lockdown has let me stay in bed until sometimes 10:30am. I allow myself to have a weak white coffee when I wake up but then I don't eat my lunch until 12pm. I will usually have soup with a pitta bread for lunch, or pitta bread with tuna.

I will then not eat until dinner time, which I usually have at 4:30/5pm due to being so hungry! I will have normal meals and portions such as homemade lasagne or haddock, chicken curry, pizza but instead of fries I make sure that I have a substanital amount of vegetables such as broccoli, sweetcorn and sprouts instead. I do sometimes treat myself to chips but this is probably once a week/2 weeks.

I will eat a dessert, as I have a sweet tooth, and this is my treat for the day. I try eat this before 6pm. I like chocolate fudge sponge, sticky toffee pudding etc. I wont have cream or icecream with the desserts. I work every wednesday as a key worker at a school and let myself have a glass of wine on this night too.

I then have a couple of hours of not eating but if I am feeling peckish I let myself have a nescafe sachet flavoured latte before 8pm but will not eat until the following day at 12pm. Since doing the intermittent fasting on 1630 calories a day, I have lost a further 7 pounds (in 3 weeks).

I am now approx 9 stone 7 and my bmi is healthy. I have dropped a dress size to a size 8 for the first time ever.

I understand that I am not overweight, and have realised that 9stone 6 for someone of my height is the minimal 'healthy weight' so I am planning on stopping to lose weight. It will be hard because I have loved the progress but I think now I am going to concentrate on toning up rather than losing weight.



This may help you if you are wanting to lose some weight, it has definitely helped me and find it a lot easier than fasting or completely cutting a food source out of my diet

cmriverside

@zoes2797

Although I agree that IF can be a viable strategy for a lot of people, I clicked "disagree" because your rate of loss is alarming.

It seems you are using IF as a means to "Restrict"

What I hate most is about how bloated I can get, it seemed like for years I would constantly look pregnant by the evening and everything would feel so much tighter. Restricting how much I ate has improved my bloating SO much.

I hope you'll start eating enough to slow down your rate of loss before you create a full-on disorder. Feeling bloated could have been due to WHAT you were eating, not how much. Frequently that would be too many grains, too much dairy.

All that sugar you are allowing yourself in order to fight hunger is not a good strategy.