This 1200 calorie thing is driving me up a wall

Options
123578

Replies

  • SkyraBee
    SkyraBee Posts: 39 Member
    Options
    While I agree, I've read many diet books and most off them state that 1200 calories is good for about two weeks to get the metabolism started. I've done the 1200 calories thing for two weeks and it really does help start the weight loss process. However, I think people go wrong when they think that is the be-all-end-all for weight loss. That's just ridiculous. Then when you add working out to the agenda, you just starve yourself.

    I agree with you. Good rant. ;)
  • SoupNazi
    SoupNazi Posts: 4,229 Member
    Options
    if it makes you feel any better Banksy, I'VE heard you say it dozens of times :flowerforyou:

    :drinker: :drinker:

    If I had a nickel...............:laugh:
  • stef_e_b
    stef_e_b Posts: 593
    Options
    My fitness pal put me at 1300 but that seems very little and I haven't lost a thing. I went to a bmr site and it said over 2000. I don't know what to do at all.
  • mrsyac2
    mrsyac2 Posts: 2,784 Member
    Options
    My fitness pal put me at 1300 but that seems very little and I haven't lost a thing. I went to a bmr site and it said over 2000. I don't know what to do at all.

    In my opinion follow 1400-1600 calories and workout- You don't even need to focus on eating your exercise calories because you have enough fat/fuel your body can use-- Jillian Michaels reccomends this as well-

    but thats just my opinion I just may get stoned for going against the grain.

    Also do you have it set to lose 1lb a week or 2lbs a week?
  • stillkristi
    stillkristi Posts: 1,135 Member
    Options
    It seems like our week to ressurect old Banks posts! :laugh: Its rough being a legand, buddy!

    Ok, so I want to ask a slightly different question, and I am hoping Banks, and all of you who have been at this longer than I have will be able to help me out. Here is my situation. Because of my excessive weight, when I set up my goals, (and I used the defaults for losing 2 lbs a week) the program defaulted to me eating in excess of 2400 calories a day. Well, eating the way I used to eat, that was of course easy. A piece of cake, as it were. :wink: However, eating the new healthy diet I am eating, with plenty of healthy protein, lots of vegies and some fruit, I usually find myself eating around 1500 calories a day. Thats with three meals and at least one snack. So, every day, I have a calorie deficit of almost 1000 calories. It worries me because I hear everyone talking about the dangers of goijng below the recommended calories. I feel good. Most days, I feel great compared to prior to this new eating style. My fear is that perhaps my metabolism will slow down, and I will lose momentum, or start to have those old cravings, or I don't know what all else. Any thoughts?
  • Love_Conquers_All
    Love_Conquers_All Posts: 211
    Options
    It seems like our week to ressurect old Banks posts! :laugh: Its rough being a legand, buddy!

    Ok, so I want to ask a slightly different question, and I am hoping Banks, and all of you who have been at this longer than I have will be able to help me out. Here is my situation. Because of my excessive weight, when I set up my goals, (and I used the defaults for losing 2 lbs a week) the program defaulted to me eating in excess of 2400 calories a day. Well, eating the way I used to eat, that was of course easy. A piece of cake, as it were. :wink: However, eating the new healthy diet I am eating, with plenty of healthy protein, lots of vegies and some fruit, I usually find myself eating around 1500 calories a day. Thats with three meals and at least one snack. So, every day, I have a calorie deficit of almost 1000 calories. It worries me because I hear everyone talking about the dangers of goijng below the recommended calories. I feel good. Most days, I feel great compared to prior to this new eating style. My fear is that perhaps my metabolism will slow down, and I will lose momentum, or start to have those old cravings, or I don't know what all else. Any thoughts?

    Hey Kristi,
    Banks had shared on this very thing up above on either this older bumped post or the other older Banks bumped one from today.

    What he shared was larger ppl with much more amounts to lose don't tend to fall into the same category as we have much more fat to use as a resource say than someone with 20 lbs or so to lose.

    Hopefully he'll pop back onto this thread and correct me if I've mis-explained it. But I think I understood him to say that.:happy:

    Are you able to add in a couple more snack times with your scedule? I do 5-6 mini meals...so breakfast 2 hours or so later perhaps an apple with 1 T. cashew nut butter, lunch, then a couple hours later anothe healthy snack of prehaps nuts and raisins measureed out then comes dinner a couple hours later then a later snack if one needs that.

    Forgive me if you already know this part but perhaps others not familair with it and hitting this thread , my be finding this helpful.

    So anywhooooo going the 5-6 mini meal route keeps our blood sugars in balance, which in turn keeps our appetites from getting out of wack it also continues to boost our metabolsim through out the day.

    Hope something here helped...oh my....please forgive me on my tired typing at the moment. :blushing:

    My eyes are closing on me and I need to get to bed.:yawn: ...I don't think I have the energy or brain power left to go correct the typo's ....wow, this sleepiness sorta just hit me big time!:yawn: :yawn: :noway: :tongue:
  • stillkristi
    stillkristi Posts: 1,135 Member
    Options
    My work schedule is really crazy. I start at 11:00 or 12:00 and to til 10:00 pm. Early in the shift, I have time for breaks, but right about the time one would usually have their evening meal, things get really intense and are like thta until 10:00. Occasionally I can grab a cup of soup around 6:00 but usually its pretty hard. So, bottom line, I am typically getting three meals and a snack or two, but not really able to do much more than that. Also, my real question is, I am feeling fine on the 1500 calories or so a day. What should I be looking for, or worrying about if that is significantly under the calories recommended.
  • mom24qties
    mom24qties Posts: 112
    Options
    Thank you Banks, for your passion and drive!! You always have great info and great encouragement!! I appreciate your passion for health and helping us understand what that really is :smile: I always enjoy your posts and find them informative - even when you rant!! We get so twisted in our society about food that it is hard to overcome the myths. Keep up the good work, man!! :heart:

    :blushing:

    I have the patience of a Jack Russle terrier sometimes. thank you for the kind words!
    My Jack Russell Terrier has no patience!:wink: Of course, he is just a puppy!:laugh:
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
    Options
    Well, this has been a fun blast from the past.

    Stillkristi, I think others have summed up my feelings on the topic of being obese and being over a 1000 calorie deficit quite nicely. So I won't press the issue.

    I'll add this. Be careful about trying to lose too much too fast. I'll give Ron from the biggest loser as an (extreme) example. If you do lose a lot of weight, very quickly you're going to have a lot of lose skin. For someone in their 20s or maybe early 30s that skin will "snap back" to a point, but for us who are 35 and older, the skin isn't so elastic any more, and you should go slower to give it time to adjust. That won't solve the problem of excess skin, but it will minimize it.

    Also, on that same skin point, besides the obvious reasons, WHAT you eat every day is just as important as how much you eat. Getting all your vitamins and minerals in is vital to healthy skin, nails, and hair. Depriving your body of micronutrients (as opposed to macro like carbs, fat, and protein) like vitamins and minerals, can have a serious impact on your health as you lose weight.
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
    Options
    Well, to play devil's advocate, I don't think the avg. woman (or man) is going to stick to a 1200 calorie diet for more than a couple of months. If it was easy to do people would do it all year. It is the number that they can use short term to help them lose weight. I don't think short term 1200 cals. is going to cause any ill effects. :flowerforyou:

    OK, well I completely disagree with this.

    I guess it depends on what you mean by short term. From the studies that I have read, it takes the human body between 4 days and two weeks to complete the transition from normal metabolic rate to a full blown starvation mode.

    So if by short term you mean a couple of days then, ok I'll buy it.

    but if by short term you mean weeks, or a month, then I call B*llSh1t (pardon the language, it's an expression from an adult drinking game). The ill effects it will cause will be your body not losing fat. Will you lose weight? Maybe, but a lot of that will be the stored glucose and protein broken down to use as fuel. And that's not the kind of weight I want to lose.

    Side note, this is why you gain weight when you eat a normal deficit right after eating waaaaay less, because all that muscle and glucose that was gone, has come back into the body.
    Well, you can call B*llSh1t if you want but about 6 years ago I cut my calories to 1200 and was exercising 6 days a week for 45 minutes to an hour. I did this for about 3 months. I lost 40 pounds and had more muscle definition than I'd had in many, many years. I lost a LOT of fat and I felt great! It took me 6 years to gain back 20 of those pounds. I ete whatever I wanted and exercised a LOT less in those 6 yrs. So call B*llSh1t if you want but it worked for me. I won't say that it was the healthiest thing to do...I would get a strong ammonia smell in my workout clothes. But it did work and I suffered no ill effects...other than a third eye growing on the side of my head. :wink:

    Yes, but if you lost 40 lbs, you were well into the overweight and maybe even obese range. The 1200 rule doesn't apply to that (I have posted that so many times I can't even count). Obese people have a different set of rules. Because there is so much extra fat hanging around, the body doesn't see a lack of fuel for quite a while. And while I said you can go into starvation, I didn't say you won't lose weight, in fact I said you probably would lose weight. That doesn't mean you were healthy, and that amonia smell was your kidneys working overtime. This is a PH imbalance which was probably causing a leeching affect in your bones (pulling calcium out to balance out the PH level)
    With all due respect I was responding to what you posted recently. Surely you don't expect me to know what you posted months or years ago. I have tried to read a lot of previous posts but really...

    You never specified you were ONLY speaking about slightly overweight people. So there are times when 1200 calories would be appropriate for SOME people....which was MY point.

    That's true, I don't know if I stated it in this one. So my appologies for that. I guess I'll say that I've stated it in many of the posts I write. To me it's common sense because I read so much about this stuff, but I realize that it may not be general knowledge. Which is why I try to say it a lot.

    I take a practical approach to this stuff. I look at all the facts, studies, articles I can. I give them weight in my own head based on the person writing it, what they are using for their data points, and what peer reviewers say about it.
    I'll give my reasoning for the 1200 calorie thing with obese people.
    When you are obese and/or higher BMI than 30 (I generally use a BMI of 35 as a better indicator though), your body's metabolic functions are pretty messed up. the body doesn't give you the right times to feel hungry, it doesn't speed up your metabolism to work off excess fat, and it will continue to store fat the same way it would if you were at a normal Body weight.

    Fat burning is (partially) a function of fat location in relation to blood supply (think of it like a trucking company). So take a trucking company example. Fat being the product, blood being the transportation medium, and muscles being the consumer. When you are obese, even if there isn't much product being produced (food being eaten), because there is so much supply readily usable, the body doesn't need to cut back on trucks (slowing the metabolism would slow the blood flow) nor does the consumer need to limit its desire for the product.
    BUT when product dries up (fat stores shrink and you get closer to a healthy bmi), the trucks need to go further and further from the main roads to get more (the older fat stores further from the main blood flow), and thus the body recognizes this as a supply shortage, automatically regulates demand, and starts pulling supply from other emergency stores that are closer to the blood supply but not used frequency (muscle amino acids).

    So really, the fat metabolism is very analogous to macro economics and transportation.

    maybe this will help people
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
    Options
    My fitness pal put me at 1300 but that seems very little and I haven't lost a thing. I went to a bmr site and it said over 2000. I don't know what to do at all.

    what's your bmi?

    what is your height, weight, and activity level?

    Remember this, any website is only going to recommend based on "educated guesses". You may need to do some tweaking to get the numbers right for you. Don't be afraid to play a little bit with your calorie amounts, distribution, and macro nutrient percentages. this site (like me) isn't a god when it comes to calories, everyone is a little different. What works for me, may be a tiny bit different from what works for you, and so on and so forth.
  • paula123
    paula123 Posts: 91
    Options
    I ate my 1200 calories yesterday exactly not one over and I don't know how I can manage to eat more :noway: It was all healthy foods so I don't know how I could eat more and I had about 500 exercise calories I didn't get too because well, it was already late at night and I was just not hungry!!
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
    Options
    I ate my 1200 calories yesterday exactly not one over and I don't know how I can manage to eat more :noway: It was all healthy foods so I don't know how I could eat more and I had about 500 exercise calories I didn't get too because well, it was already late at night and I was just not hungry!!

    Ha, you think that's tough, try finding 3200 healthy calories a day.
  • nitag
    nitag Posts: 706 Member
    Options
    My fitness pal put me at 1300 but that seems very little and I haven't lost a thing. I went to a bmr site and it said over 2000. I don't know what to do at all.

    what's your bmi?

    what is your height, weight, and activity level?

    Remember this, any website is only going to recommend based on "educated guesses". You may need to do some tweaking to get the numbers right for you. Don't be afraid to play a little bit with your calorie amounts, distribution, and macro nutrient percentages. this site (like me) isn't a god when it comes to calories, everyone is a little different. What works for me, may be a tiny bit different from what works for you, and so on and so forth.

    Boss I don't think I have ever respected someone's opinion on this subject as much as I do yours.. Now being a "newbie", I have been following the 1200 calorie a day thing because thats what this site directs me to do.. Some days I am fine and some days I am seriously feeling like I am starving.. How do we really know how much to eat, I am so confused.. I don't want to lose to fast. I want to do it slow and learn how to eat properly so I don't have to do this again... In 96 I lost 80 lbs in 6 months and well here I am again.. I was a lot younger in 96 and it just isn't as easy.. But I don't stress on that.. I just want to do it the right way... My Dr. said between 1200 and 1400 calories a day and not to eat my exercise calories back.. When I mentioned that to him he looked at me funny and said then why are you exercising.. Ugg.. So another confusing subject that so many have opinions on and another on that confuses me.. But my point is I want to do this right.....Period!!!

    I am 44, currently 200 lbs even, 5"4 " Current BMI 34.7..

    The BL site says I should be eating between 1400 - 1799 calories a day... I have kinda been following that plan but not eating that many calories.. I've lost 20 lbs in 6 weeks..

    Currently, I am working out 45 to 90 mins a day... Mostly cardio.... light weights (5 lbs) and 100 crunches a day...

    Give me your opinion and don't be afraid of saying it like it is.. I am here for support and to have a good swift kick in the butt to keep me in line....


    Anita
  • ChubbyBunny
    ChubbyBunny Posts: 3,523 Member
    Options
    MFP set me at 1200 cals when I first started.... even when I wasn't working out that was too low... I was a nightmare to be around.
    So, through asking advice and opinions from successful people on this site, I have gradually increased my calories (which was scary...before I joined this site I was living on anywhere from 700-1000 calories a day...working out insanely). First I went to 1400.... then 1500....now I am doing a trial 2 weeks at 1600...I've also had to re-think work outs due to my body type.

    Don't rely solely on what MFP tells you.... it is a machine making an educated guess...sometimes it's not guessing right for your life.
    :flowerforyou:
  • farmgirlh
    farmgirlh Posts: 240
    Options
    I am 5'4" with hypothyroidism. It is a totally different than with a healthy metabolism. I am on replacement hormones but it still isn't the same. After talking with my doctor we set my weight loss calories to 1250 with no workout never more than 1500. This is for me, my activity level, my workout intensity level, if I change any of them then I need to go back and we will reevaluate.

    I do think that unless you have a medical issue or under 5ft tall you have no reason to 1200 a day. Good luck to everyone!!:drinker:
  • stillkristi
    stillkristi Posts: 1,135 Member
    Options

    what's your bmi?

    what is your height, weight, and activity level?

    Remember this, any website is only going to recommend based on "educated guesses". You may need to do some tweaking to get the numbers right for you. Don't be afraid to play a little bit with your calorie amounts, distribution, and macro nutrient percentages. this site (like me) isn't a god when it comes to calories, everyone is a little different. What works for me, may be a tiny bit different from what works for you, and so on and so forth.

    This is beginning to make so much more sense. smiley-bow.gif

    Ok, one more question, as long as I have come to the mountain where the guru lives... :wink: How can I use my BMI as a tool to guage caloric intake? Don't feel like you have to re-create a dissertation, just point me in the right direction, please. Thanks so much for sharing your experience and wisdom.
  • renae77
    renae77 Posts: 3,394 Member
    Options
    On here I have my weight calculated at 177 and they have my calories set at 1290. So I went in and changed some things and it still has me set at 1380. Does this seem right to anyone? I can almost starve on that small amount of calories.
  • kayovercomer
    kayovercomer Posts: 98
    Options
    It really is just a number.
    I'm funny; if I'm hungry, I'm going to eat.
    Life is too short not too.
    For me, it's all about fiber and nutrition
    but I think I haven't quite gotten the 500 calorie deficit each week. I mean obviously, because I haven't been losing. But I've only just started back so I'm hopeful.

    I think for some people it's 1200, for others 1400, for some 1600. We have to eat for fuel
    and fuel gets us exercising and then we can eat...but the food has to be whole grains, really filling and low in fat.
  • jenszoo
    jenszoo Posts: 19
    Options
    Banks I don't know if anyone has posted the link to your other post about extra calories but here it is...

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

    I found this very helpful.

Categories