Is this a good ratio?

cjo8922

I am very much a beginner with nutrition and fitness. (Starting today!) Regarding nutrition: I am 149 lb female, sedentary (working on it) and I am working on diet/nutrition to get everything lined up for wellness. I am considering a1200 calorie diet with 30 grams carb, 60 gram fat and 135 gram of protein (10%, 45% 45%) with beginner weight training and walking 3 miles a day. Thoughts? And thank you in advance for providing your thoughts.

AnnPT77

How old, how tall? Where did the 1200 calorie goal come from? (That's the minimum MFP will give any woman, too low for many of us for best health and appearance outcomes.)

If I assume you're average height and age 30, we'd expect you to burn around 2000 or more calories daily with that amount of exercise. In that scenario, eating 1200 gross calorie intake would be a deficit of 800 or more calories daily, and an expected loss over 1.5 pounds per week. A pound and a half per week would be quite aggressive at your current weight, IMO. Aggressively fast weight loss is not a path to wellness and thriving: It increases health risks.

Are bad things certain to happen? No. But risk goes up.

Maybe you're much more petite, maybe older . . . maybe 1200 is OK. But 1200 plus all exercise calories was punitively low for me when I was at a similar weight at age 59-60. I accidentally lost weight too fast - MFP under-estimates my calorie needs, 1200 plus exercise should've been OK in my case. I felt great, not hungry, energetic at first. . . then hit a wall. I was weak and fatigued. It took multiple weeks to recover back to normal, even though I corrected as soon as I realized. Probably some hair breakage or thinning happened a few weeks down the road, since that's usually a delayed effect. No one needs any of that.

What I'd suggest is getting a calorie goal from MFP, being accurate in your profile settings, asking for a weight loss rate like one pound a week to start. If you follow the MFP process, you'd set activity level based on life before intentional exercise, then estimate exercise carefully then log and eat those, too. Test that calorie level for 4-6 weeks, a whole menstrual cycle if you have those. After sticking close to that for that long, you can adjust your calorie goal if necessary to personalize your calorie estimate and dial in that target loss rate.

Like I said, maybe 1200 is right. It can be for some older, petite, not very active women. But way more women than that think we women all need to eat that little to lose weight at a reasonable rate. That's not true, as a universal thing. It can be too low, and not ideal for health.

Your fat and protein goals would be pretty reasonable (in grams) for an average sized woman, but demographic details do matter. I see that you've reduced carbs to a bare minimum, and low carb eating is fine, for those it suits. If you do decide to eat more calories and target slower loss for health reasons, you can increase fats or protein to raise calories instead of increasing carbs, if you prefer. It would be more usual to go for a reasonable protein goal in grams, then increase fats to get more calories, on a typical low-carb regimen. Personally, I don't low carb, but I don't think it's wrong for others who prefer it.

Higher calories, slower loss, can not only minimize health risks, but also give us more opportunity to experiment and find permanent, new healthier habits that not only will take us to goal weight, but that can be continued long term to stay at a healthy weight. Since most people find maintaining more difficult than losing - and losing difficult enough! - finding those new habits during loss can be extremely helpful. When I got to goal weight, I added a few daily calories to stabilize my weight, and just kept going on the same well-practiced happy routine. (I'm in year 9+ of maintaining a healthy weight now.)

Just my opinions throughout, of course.

Best wishes: Success IME is worth the effort involved!