1200 Calorie Question

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FourLynne
FourLynne Posts: 135 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've seen posts on 1200 calorie diets.

My question is that if MFP assigns a higher calorie allowance, why people are restricting themselves to only 1200 per day? Is it to try and lose weight more quickly? Is the MFP daily allowance set to allow you to lose weight at a more moderate pace (i.e., 1-2 lbs per week)? Just curious!

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  • Caroline244
    Caroline244 Posts: 56 Member
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    When you enter your personal information (age, height, SW, GW, etc.), MFP assigns a minimum number of calories a day just to keep your body going. For many people, 1200 calories is the number given. Your number may just be different is all. :-)
  • geekyjock76
    geekyjock76 Posts: 2,720 Member
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    Most of it comes from people not actually understanding that the 1200 number is their net caloric intake, not gross. So you have lots of people eating only 1200 and adding 500 or so to the deficit from exercise. However, they are not replacing the calories lost which increases their deficit further and they end up netting 700 instead of the planned 1200. Although they may have entered a goal to lose 1 lb per week, they are on track to lose a hypothetical 2 lbs per week due to the increased deficit.

    Some others naively believe the larger the deficit they create, the more body fat they will lose which is not the case since your body has a limit to how many calories from actual fat it can burn in one day. The only people who should be assuming massive deficits (40% or greater) are seriously obese persons with over 100 lbs of excess fat to lose.

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