Can’t lose weight on 1200 cal per day
Replies
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Ok thanks so much for your advise, but the thing is when l eat 1200 calories per day l am not losing hence why l am eating at 900 cal per day. That’s the only way l actually lose any weight.
What do YOU define and how do you MEASURE "actually losing any weight"?
Here is what 11.1lbs = 5.035kg in 260 days on an average effective deficit of -150 Cal a day looks like.
In order for you NOT to be able to achieve this while eating 1200, your TDEE would have to be below 1350.
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If you are eating 900 calories a day and still not losing any weight. What kind of exercising are you doing? How many minutes or hour per day to you exercise? What kind of food are you eating? I will tell you this... If I eat 900 calories per day. I need to burn 1200 calories in order to lose weight. If you do not burn more calories then what you ate, you will not lose weight. Another thing is what type of food are you eating at 900 calories everyday? And type of exercise are you doing? In the end you got to put more work into exercising to burn more. Hope this helps. Good Luck.0
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@shezian I'm quoting again what I wrote above:
...slow down, eat properly, preserve your muscles. You need them!
Why do you think losing muscle, increasing the risk of getting osteoporosis and looking flabby is worth a quick change on the scale? Think about that.
Plus, you've not answered the question yet what means that you've not lost anything, and how you measure your food intake. Opening up your diary would really help in finding out where things go wrong.11 -
In addition to the above, are you sure you're selecting accurate entries in the database? Some are notoriously wrong. Many aren't up-to-date as products change but not everyone checks / updates the entries.
I know it's hard. Being short and close to goal weight, our maintenance calories aren't much higher than the minimum recommended amount of 1200. I now get 1340 in maintenance. When I was losing weight, it didn't take too many incorrect entries or an inaccurate measurement or an overestimation of my exercise burn, to wipe out that 130 deficit. However, as has been said repeatedly, under-eating is really not good.
Sharing your diary will allow more experienced people to look for potential flaws.7 -
Ok thanks so much for your advise, but the thing is when l eat 1200 calories per day l am not losing hence why l am eating at 900 cal per day. That’s the only way l actually lose any weight.
The thing is, how much weight per week are you expecting to lose?
1/2 pound a week would be the range you should be looking at. This can be easily masked by water weight fluctuations. https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations
1/2 pound a week is only a 250 calorie deficit each day. Your logging has to be very accurate, and your activity level needs to be at least what you signed up for.5 -
megalodon182014 wrote: »If you are eating 900 calories a day and still not losing any weight. What kind of exercising are you doing? How many minutes or hour per day to you exercise? What kind of food are you eating? I will tell you this... If I eat 900 calories per day. I need to burn 1200 calories in order to lose weight. If you do not burn more calories then what you ate, you will not lose weight. Another thing is what type of food are you eating at 900 calories everyday? And type of exercise are you doing? In the end you got to put more work into exercising to burn more. Hope this helps. Good Luck.
Whoa........there is some serious confusion/misinformation here.
BMR = basal metabolic rate. The number of calories you burn if you stayed in bed all day.
Add 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. for your activity level. Example - a sedentary person would typically get 10% on top of BMR. That number is called NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).
If you did ZERO deliberate exercise, and you ate less than your NEAT calories........you would lose weight.
What type of exercise are you doing (how many hours of exercise?) gives you that 1200 calorie burn? How can you exercise day in and day out with 900 calories of fuel.
If you are really doing this, you are torching lean muscle at an alarming rate.7 -
Shezian, it's important to know that, being short and not actually overweight, it takes time to lose weight.
As TeaBea says, your body needs a set number of calories, just to survive. Activity on top of that requires more calories. With an activity level of 'Sedentary', that's what MFP would have as your maintenance figure - the number of calories to stay at your current weight. A higher activity level requires more calories to maintain your current weight.
The general advice, for people who don't have much to lose, is to set MFP to the lowest weight loss rate of half a pound (0.25kg) a week, which works out to be a deficit of 250 calories off your maintenance number.
HOWEVER, the minimum that MFP will allow is 1200 calories. Eating below that, unless under strict medical supervision, is really really not recommended unless you actually want to make yourself very ill.
Using my current figures as an example (as I've said before, our starting stats are not dissimilar).
My maintenance figure is 1340 calories.
To lose 0.25kg a week, I'd need to be eating 1090 calories a day. That's below the minimum so I'd be set 1200.
My deficit is therefore only 140.
No matter what rate loss I select in MFP, I'd still be set 1200 calories, I'd still only have a deficit of 140 and I'd therefore only be losing at 0.12kg a week. It would take 8 weeks to lose 1kg.
At such a small deficit, it doesn't take much to blow it if your weighing and logging aren't accurate. It also doesn't take much water weight or bloating from your monthly cycle to mask any loss. Weigh yourself weekly as a tracking mechanism but be aware that weight goes up an down a little, naturally, and don't be surprised if you don't see any clear change for a while.
I was 68kg when I started on MFP. I can't remember what my maintenance calories figure was back then, but I was allocated 1200 calories and perhaps did have a deficit of 250 at that point. As I lost weight, the number of calories my body needed to maintain that new weight went down. I was still allocated 1200 calories which meant my deficit kept getting smaller and smaller and the weight loss rate got similarly smaller. It took a long time, but I'm now at 53kg and have switched to maintenance.
You CAN lose weight without starving yourself or making yourself ill, but it'll take time and you need to be realistic about that. Don't believe the hype or the ads you see on TV or in magazines as you don't have a lot to lose to start with.
(Also, make sure you eat your exercise calories, otherwise your net figure will be below the 1200 minimum).4
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