Should I only eat 1200 calories?

everybody's body is different - i would find a good BMR calculator and figure out your base calories yourself. 1200 is most likely too low...

everybody's body is different - i would find a good BMR calculator and figure out your base calories yourself. 1200 is most likely too low...

If she found it difficult to lose weight at 1200 I'd say it's probably not too low. Less calories in = more weight lost, the equation isn't any more complicated than that. Even metabolic slowdown doesn't counter the effect completely.

everybody's body is different - i would find a good BMR calculator and figure out your base calories yourself. 1200 is most likely too low...

If she found it difficult to lose weight at 1200 I'd say it's probably not too low. Less calories in = more weight lost, the equation isn't any more complicated than that. Even metabolic slowdown doesn't counter the effect completely.

When I ate 1,200 calories I plateaued after a few weeks and didn't lose at all for 3 months. When I started eating 1,600 I started losing again. I'm eating 2,000 now and still losing.

Proper fueling is necessary for healthy fat loss.

everybody's body is different - i would find a good BMR calculator and figure out your base calories yourself. 1200 is most likely too low...

If she found it difficult to lose weight at 1200 I'd say it's probably not too low. Less calories in = more weight lost, the equation isn't any more complicated than that. Even metabolic slowdown doesn't counter the effect completely.

When I ate 1,200 calories I plateaued after a few weeks and didn't lose at all for 3 months. When I started eating 1,600 I started losing again. I'm eating 2,000 now and still losing.


Proper fueling is necessary for healthy fat loss.

encouraging to those of us who struggle with too low number of calories....

If your seriously overweight, then you may be eating too little. If you don't eat enough for your age/weight/activity, then your body goes into starvation mode and tries to hang onto the weight. Try using the calorie calculator. Good luck!

Find out what your TDEE is, its much more accurate than a BMR and use that as your diary goal. Then create a deficit from there. It is much easier seeing how "in the green" you are at the end of the week to try to figure out what you should have lost.
A calorie is never just a calorie but the general rule is you need -3500 calories to lose a pound of fat. So if you eat your TDEE and exercise off 500 calories 7 days a week you should lose 1lb "in theory".

I'm struggling here. I'm seriously overweight and I'm trying to loose it, but I'm not sure I'm doing it the right way. My doctor said to go to 1200 calories a day, plus exercise regularly. Last summer, I did this for 4 months as best as I could. I rode my bike 5-6 days a week. My heart rate monitor said I burned roughly around 400 calories per ride. During the summer I lost only 5 lbs. and I worked hard. At the beginning I told doctor it was hard to only eat 1200 colories so he put me on an appetite suppressant.

With winter here I haven't riden since the middle of November. I'm now set up to ride on my trainer indoors, I have a tradmill and some small pound free weights. I am getting back into things; however, I am not sure if I should stay at the 1200 calories and take the pills?

Thoughts?

First, you say you are Seriously overweight, yet your ticker only shows 15 pounds to go. That is not really considered 'seriously overweight'. So unless you actually have 40 or more pounds to lose, then you aren't seriously overweight. Especially not enough to be prescribed diet pills. If you only have 15 lbs to lose, then you will be doing good to lose 1/2 pound a week. The closer to goal weight you are, the slower the weight loss.

Second, you said you ate at 1200 calories "the best you could". What does that mean? Did you weigh and measure everything and accurately log every thing you ate, for every day, for 3 months straight? Chances are, you did what many of us do- you estimated how many calories you were eating, forgetting about little things that you snacked on her and there, and you had days that you went way over your calorie goal. It doesn't take a whole lot of 'cheat' meals and grazing to put you close to maintenance level. If you did indeed eat at 1200 for 3 months straight and didn't lose one pound, then there is something wrong with your thyroid. Especially if you say you were exercising during that time.

And finally, you said you were exercising 5-6 days a week, riding your bike, and burning 400 calories per session. Did you use a HRM with a chest strap, like a Polar brand? How long were you riding? How fast were you going? How hard were you working?
I weigh almost 200 pounds and it takes a hard hour of riding with my HR elevated and me being out of breath to burn 400 calories in an hour. If you are considerably lighter than I am, your burns would be lower. Were you eating back those 400 calories during that time, so you were actually eating 1600 a day?

Most likely, a combination of eating more calories than you realized and burning less calories than you thought, are the reasons that you didn't lose weight.

ETA- I reread your post and saw that you lost 5 pounds over those 4 months. That is good, since you don't have that much left to lose.

If you enjoy hunger and losing muscle, sure, why not?

Not sure what your 1200 calories amounted to when you were eating them. I started on 1200 calories per day in June 2012 (doctor recommended). I have lost almost 40 lbs. I will say that I do measure and log everything I eat, the good the bad and the ugly. I keep my food choices to chicken breast, eggs, tuna, salmon, talapia, lean ground turkey or beef, lots of green leafy vegetables (I love salad), avocados, some cheese, almonds, walnuts, greek yogurt, high protein cereal, and some fruit. Lots of water, some black coffee, unsweet tea, an occasional diet coke. I also make room for pizza, chips salsa and an adult beverage now and then. I can honestly say I've rarely been truly hungry. I started walking again and I have an elliptical at home. I began working with a trainer in August, cross training. I try to get 3 work-outs in a week. I rarely eat my exercise calories, in fact some days I forget to log my exercise.

To make it work you have to log and you have to have some kind of physical activity. It does work, however having said that, if you are doing all these things and not losing perhaps it's time for some bloodworm. I would never take diet pills, but that's me. In order for this to work you have to find what will work for you personally.

Hang in there! Wishing you success!

judging by the fact your profile says you have "10 lbs to go" I really doubt that you're "seriously overweight.

Hi, being 5'1" 1200 calories seems to be working great for me. My first week was incredible but since then I've been averaging about 2.5-3 lbs per week weight loss. There are lots of tools out there that can suggest how many calories to intake to lose weight (including MFP) but your doctor probably knows best and can give more of a medical/clinical opinion.

Proper fueling is necessary for healthy fat loss.

Healthy loss yes, but less calories ALWAYS equals more loss. Plateauing dieters put in a controlled environment at the calorie intake they thought they were at lose weight, never heard of this not being the case. Poor record keeping is usually the culprit, but I'll say this again: The metabolic slowdown will almost never keep up with a decrease in calories, the effect is simply not that pronounced in someone with even vaguely normal body chemistry.

My fat is simply from too much pizza and chocolate combined with not enough activity. I'm now eating at 1500 calories and weighing/recording absolutely everything, and most of my liquid intake is diet pepsi, According to MFP I'm running a deficit of around 2400 calories per day and additionally I'm on the treadmill 3-4 times a week and not eating those calories back. Half the posters on here don't know the Krebs cycle from a bicycle but would have you believe I'm not going to lose any weight because my metabolism will slow too much, I'll be craving sweets because of my aspartame intake, and probably grow a second head just from drinking Pepsi. The reality? I feel fine, I'm losing weight hand over fist, I'm not hungry, and I already have more energy than I've had in years. I consulted a dietician and she hasn't told me I need to eat more and I trust her more than I trust someone parroting things on a forum filled with misinformation.