Devil's advocate: 1200 calories for petite/short women?

I agree with being more active and eating more!!! My current calorie intake is 2100. My workouts are intense with cardio and weight training daily, so for me that is what I need to maintain my weight being 5'4" and 112 pounds. I could honestly never imagine calorie intake being so low, but I suppose everyone is different and needs vary.

I'm 5', 1.25" and currently fluctuating between 145-150 lbs. I'm training for a sprint triathlon. My BMR is set at 1,400. Depending on what day it is for training, I tailor my caloric intake to compensate for the caloric burn for the day. On days I'm swimming, I know I can easily burn 400-500 for an hour of doing an hour of laps in the pool. On my "rest" day, I would eat my BMR calories. Training days can be anywhere between 1,800-2,100. At this point, I gave up on a numeric goal on the scale. I'm fitting into size 6 with my current weight and I'm more interested with body/fat %. My goal is to get my body fat down to 16-18% from 26%.

I'm 5'3" and at 1200 calories a day I was starving. i changed my profile to lose only a half pound a week just so i could eat more. i'm always hungry on the weekdays when i don't have time to exercise. then on the weekends when i do have time to exercise, i don't eat all of the calories i've earned. it kind of sucks. now i just splurge when i want and figure i'll make it up with extra exercise on the weekend.

I'm now really confused. I'm not petite at all, nor average weight. I'm 5'8" and weigh 249 pounds, but have a sedentary home-based job (so no commute). according to MFP, my daily goal is 1290 calories. so not quite the 1200 the OP mentioned but pretty close, except i weigh a over 100 pounds more. Am I calculating something wrong?

MFP's target depends how active you say you are and how fast you say you want to lose. If you put 2 lbs/week it takes 1000 off what it thinks you use, so sedentary plus high loss = low target.

Bump!!

I agree with being more active and eating more!!! My current calorie intake is 2100. My workouts are intense with cardio and weight training daily, so for me that is what I need to maintain my weight being 5'4" and 112 pounds. I could honestly never imagine calorie intake being so low, but I suppose everyone is different and needs vary.

I'm 5', 1.25" and currently fluctuating between 145-150 lbs. I'm training for a sprint triathlon. My BMR is set at 1,400. Depending on what day it is for training, I tailor my caloric intake to compensate for the caloric burn for the day. On days I'm swimming, I know I can easily burn 400-500 for an hour of doing an hour of laps in the pool. On my "rest" day, I would eat my BMR calories. Training days can be anywhere between 1,800-2,100. At this point, I gave up on a numeric goal on the scale. I'm fitting into size 6 with my current weight and I'm more interested with body/fat %. My goal is to get my body fat down to 16-18% from 26%.

I'd reconsider the 16% goal as it is not necessary really nor is it healthy for most women.

I don't think 16% is unhealthy so much as incredibly difficult to attain and sustain for the ordinary woman. There are women elite athletes who are much lower than 16%, although their body fat percentages never are as low as those of male athletes who go down to 6 or even 4%

I'm 4'6" -_- lol 86 lbs and I eat like 1000-1500 a day depnding if I'm trying to lose or maintain. Walk about 2 hours a day.

I think it's obvious that a lot of this will depend on your frame size and weight, as well as your genetic makeup - my family all seem to have slow metabolisms, and none of us eat a huge amount.

I'm 5ft2, and when I was a skinny teenager (47kg) I ate around 1000kcal gross, and felt fine on that (cycled loads, did well in college, plenty of energy, weight completely stable). My body has changed quite a bit over the last 20yrs though, and my natural intake is now around 1400kcal gross (I'm 59kg on that, and have been for the past 5 years). Some of that is fat , but actually most of it is muscle! My body composition is totally different now. I'm aiming to get to 55kg - 47kg would not be a healthy weight for me now.

It is difficult to get a good balance of nutrients, but that is mostly due to non-petite serving sizes - the average "adult-size" meal contains more than half of my daily quota of calories. That doesn't leave much room for anything else, and not all meals are a perfect 50/20/30 balance! For example, I had a fennel risotto for dinner last night. One plate was already way over my daily carb allowance, and only contained 15g protein - MFP thinks I needed to have eaten another 60g of protein that day, out of my remaining 700kcal, which is not really possible as a vegetarian if you are trying to eat normal meals and not just cottage cheese or protein shakes.

The main advantage I find with MFP is that it makes me more aware of empty calories (I've switched to a skinny latte after workouts because it has the same protein but fewer calories, and have also changed my breakfast yoghurt from greek to natural and eat fewer biscuits). I haven't made any significant changes to my diet, but it was pretty healthy to begin with and with only 4kg to lose I hopefully shouldn't need to make any major changes.

so here is what I have found out over the last 2 or so months.

1. started with 1200 calories. I didn't look at NET calories, just ate. worked out. Lost 20 pounds

2. started reading the posts. Upped my calories to 1400 (slightly above my BMR) - gained 6 pounds. Went to the doctor - based on thyroid, and everything else...1400 was above where I needed to be.

3. started on a high protein no carb 1000 calories...losing weight.

Upping my calories did not help me at all.

5'2'

I`m 45-yrs old, 5`0 ft . I was losing about half a pound to a pound a week on 1200 cal. I upped my calories to 1500 after reading all the bad things about 1200, but gained 6-lbs and now i`m not losing any weight in 3-weeks..

I'm 5'2" currently 175 and I eat 1900 a day I'm pretty active, and workout 4 times a week, I used to only eat 1500 calories but that got me nowhere

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