Very confused.

At 1200 calories a day, you are not eating enough. At 5' 9'' that is well below your BMR.

Both cardio and weight training will help with weight loss, but dieting improperly will sabotage your results. Including underfeeding.

At 1200 calories a day, you are not eating enough. At 5' 9'' that is well below your BMR.

What exactly is BMR and if shes well below then shouldnt she be losing(curious cause i eat 1200 a day im 5'1) ?

It takes time to lose weight dear, its not an over nught thing it takes dedication, consistancy, and repetition to
Lose weight but its a lifestyle choice so it takes time. (my opinion) rome
Wasnt built in a day Goodluck! Also muscle weighs more then fat maybe your turning fat into muscle!

The guy posting is is dead on. You should open your diary so people can see what you are eating, your calories might be low but the quality could be bad

You need to do both.

1) Caloric deficit causes the body to lose tissue to compensate for the deficit. this is fact of life and the CORE to weight loss. there is no way around this.

2) BMR is not a constant thing. Eating far too low calories will still cause you to lose weight, but it will also slow your BMR to lower levels over a long period of time. This can cause problems when you start eating normally again. Food is good, and I would rather be able to eat 3k calories a day with a healthy diet + exercise plan, rather than starve myself and do craptons of cardio, thus screwing my BMR and forcing myself to eat next to nothing forever while living in fear of gaining 2 lbs of fat. Have a sensible diet plan, and exercise plan.

3) an extension of 1. When youre losing tissue, the body will prioritize. There are different types of muscle fibres in the body, Type I, Type II, and variations in each. for example, when you lift something stupidly heavy, different muscle fibres are being activated than when youre walking or jogging. Why this is important is when youre in deficit, if youre not using it, youre losing it. Not doing heavy lifting? Then your Type II fibres are being shed as they are being sacrificed to meet the caloric deficit. This is why you see soooooo many people who reach their weight goal with cardio only, yet still are unhappy about how they look as they have been shedding a ton of muscle mass and still look flabby.

4) Doing resistance training keeps Type II muscle around. Meaning the caloric deficit youre in causes other types of tissue to be lost instead. Like fat for example. So weight loss will be the same over time, but you will have more fat loss. Which is the goal you should be after.

5) Do both cardio and resistance training.

edit: and dont worry too much about eating back calories for now. Its honestly mostly math OCD. Pick a decent calories total per day, have a regular activity sced containing both heavy weights and cardio. meet those 2 things and the rest takes care of itself.

So say her BMR is 1700, what would she need to consume in order to lose (without taking exercise into account). Would she need to eat 1700, or lower?

Yes. What she eats and exercise will determine how much of it is fat and how much is muscle.

1600 of twinkies for a year vs 1600 chicken/veg and rice...

So say her BMR is 1700, what would she need to consume in order to lose (without taking exercise into account). Would she need to eat 1700, or lower?

Yes. What she eats and exercise will determine how much of it is fat and how much is muscle.

1600 of twinkies for a year vs 1600 chicken/veg and rice...

calories given equal macros is meaningless where the source comes from. give me 180g protein and the rest of my calories from twinkies and i will be just as good losing weight compared to chicken and veg.

Eating "clean" unprocessed foods is always the best choice.

White breads pasta and flour are all milled into a fine powder that is easily and quickly digested making you hungrier quicker. The rush of carbohydrates in one burst will also cause more of an insulin spike than any slow digesting carbohydrate, im sure we all know the effects there.
As well as the energy needed in order to break down and digest wholegrains and vegetables is more therefore more calories are burnt ie the thermic effect of "clean" foods is higher.

In the end the best way to see if things work is watch the bodybuilders/fitness models, these days the info is so readily available so why make the same mistakes others have made before.

Although that that would make 1 hell of an interesting experiment if any1 would be up for it

Just FYI for anyone who doesn't already know... There is a BMR calculator on this site under the "Tools" tab.