Maintaining weight on 1200 calories?

You cant take shortcuts and expect it to turn out well in the long run. Now you have to find where your maintencance calories should actually be and continue to slowly work your way up until you reach that point. You may gain in the begining but its necessary to fuel your body correctly.

You should be able to eat more (I'm about your height and weight and eat around 2000/day with moderate exercise). I would recommend slowly introducing more calories (like 100/week) until you reach your goal for maintenance. In order to understand that goal, I recommend having your resting metabolic rate (RMR) tested. I had mine done by a nutritionist at a grocery store. That can help you understand what kind of metabolic issues, if any, you might be having. As far as I've read, your metabolism doesn't "break", though it can be temporarily suppressed from VLCDs. It can also be "fixed" by eating the correct amount of food.

If you're in college, your university might offer metabolic testing. The one I went to does.

You cant take shortcuts and expect it to turn out well in the long run. Now you have to find where your maintencance calories should actually be and continue to slowly work your way up until you reach that point. You may gain in the begining but its necessary to fuel your body correctly.

Bingo.

This post should be echoed throughout all of the folks that cheer so hard for 1200 calories...

I don't really have experience with this, so what I'm saying is just a guess:

As you continue to up your calories you'll gain weight. Because you were on such a restrictive diet and now you're starting to eat what *most* people are eating to LOSE weight, your body probably doesn't know what to do with itself and is packing what it can away in preparation for your next bout of 400-1000 calories a day. Personally (again, no basis for this) I would first and foremost begin eating an amount of HEALTHY (!!!) foods until I felt right again; no weight is worth being ill, and once you're in a better frame of mind work on either increasing or decreasing your calories until you can maintain your weight within 5ish pounds. For me, at 5'3, 105 pounds, I can maintain this at just around 1,500 calories a day. When I start going up, I drop a hundred or two calories until I'm back at a comfortable weight, and then increase and see-saw my way day to day. Your body will eventually adjust to having an appropriate amount of calories and your weight will even itself out. Good luck!

Eat what your TDEE should be for 3-4 months. Then eat at a reasonable deficit again until you lose the weight you'll gain in the meantime.

No way around it unfortunately.

Over the past six months or so I've lost 60lbs, going from 190lbs to 130 at 5ft 6.

I won't lie, I didn't lose the weight particularly healthily - I was on a very, very low calorie diet (around 800-1000 at first, but as I became more and more unhappy it ended up being around 400-500).

Over the past few weeks I've been looking to slowly increase my calorie intake to maintain my weight, and have been doing it in instalments of 100 calories a week. However, I'm currently eating 1200-1300 daily and maintaining (have been for about three weeks).

If I were shorter and weighed less then I would perhaps understand maintaining at this amount - however, I'm farily active (walking for about an hour 5-6 days a week) and have a BMI of 21. I realise I've probably broken my metabolism but I don't know where to go from here - if I start eating more than 1200/1300, will I begin to gain weight?

Really would appreciate some help because the amount of calories I'm consuming at the moment is still making me pretty tired and unable to concentrate, and I haven't had a period since May which is also worrying.

If my stats are relevant: 18 y/o female, 5ft 6, 130lbs

I read your other post from June. I truly feel you need to talk to a therapist and a medical doctor. Reading between the lines, I think a therapist would be very helpful so that you can establish a new and healthy relationship with foods.

And just remember as you try to find your perfect maintenance intake you very likely will gain a bit of weight. And it's OK if you do. Taking care of yourself first on the inside, will do wonders for where you appear to emotionally be right now.

Go to a doctor.

Go to a doctor.

^^ this exactly.
Not because you are somehow tragically ill, but because your doctor is the best one to assess the situation.

This is tricky, I did something similar (about 700 calories a day), gained 10lbs after increasing my calories to a normal amount, but was able to maintain on 1500-2000 calories a day after my gain.

Could I ask how you increased to a normal amount? Was it something similar to a 100 calorie increase weekly or did you just jump to a normal amount?

I don't know how much exactly, but it was very moderately... It took about 9 months.

Real Talk: You know that you have lost this weight in an unhealthy sort of manner. Don't be surprised if the weight you see on the scale goes up after you go back to eating. This is due to your metabolism probably being lowered from not enough calories being consumed. Do not fret though. As someone said, you should stop using the scale and start looking in the mirror for results now. Slowly increase your caloric intake every week. Again yes, your weight may go up but this should probably be ignored. As your body has been in ketosis so long you may have lost a lot of muscle mass and the weight that you rapidly regain will be some fat, but muscle as well. Make sure that you also increase/maintain being active through all of this. This does NOT mean go to the gym and pump out 3 hours of hardcore exercise. Maybe start with some low/moderate activity and work your way up. If you want to keep your body fat percentage low, then increase your caloric intake but watch WHAT you eat. If you do not eat properly then all the weight you gain back will be fat, if you eat clean then the weight you gain back will only be some fat, but your muscle mass will also slowly be restored. So as you increase activity keep eating clean but increase your lean protein intake so that you regain your muscle mass and not fat. Hope this helps