1200cal/day really works.

What are you going to do when you are done "dieting" and need to go on maintenance? I'm glad you enjoy recreational dieting. It's fun and the cool thing (I know from experience of losing more than 50 pounds six or seven times), is that each time you do the 1200 calorie approach, you get tons of compliments on your quick weight loss. Even better, you get to get the same sense of accomplishment every few years because you have to go on a diet again.

Am not in a haste to lose the weight. Am on 1200 because of my lifestyle. when I start exercising, i will up my calories.

So then like me are you short and sedentary most days? And plan to eat back your exercise cals when you get more active?

What are you going to do when you are done "dieting" and need to go on maintenance? I'm glad you enjoy recreational dieting. It's fun and the cool thing (I know from experience of losing more than 50 pounds six or seven times), is that each time you do the 1200 calorie approach, you get tons of compliments on your quick weight loss. Even better, you get to get the same sense of accomplishment every few years because you have to go on a diet again.

Am not in a haste to lose the weight. Am on 1200 because of my lifestyle. when I start exercising, i will up my calories.

So then like me are you short and sedentary most days? And plan to eat back your exercise cals when you get more active?

Exactly hun, 5ft 2, sedentary (even though many people think i am likely more active coz of my boys but they only know the half of it) but i plan on exercising. The main reason am doing this is i have a large muscle mass actually. I tend to gain alot of muscle when am exercising, and easily grow big even when i lose weight. So am trying to lose some weight first, keeping my muscle mass normal(though some think otherwise), then when i start exercising, i can control how much muscle i gain, because i will be able to see that clearly without much fat in the way

Wow, that must be sa-weet to have such a large muscle mass from being sedentary. Seriously, I just spit my water out my nose. This cannot be a real thread.

The moderator should read this post.

The mods need to read a lot of posts these last few days.

What are you going to do when you are done "dieting" and need to go on maintenance? I'm glad you enjoy recreational dieting. It's fun and the cool thing (I know from experience of losing more than 50 pounds six or seven times), is that each time you do the 1200 calorie approach, you get tons of compliments on your quick weight loss. Even better, you get to get the same sense of accomplishment every few years because you have to go on a diet again.

Am not in a haste to lose the weight. Am on 1200 because of my lifestyle. when I start exercising, i will up my calories.

So then like me are you short and sedentary most days? And plan to eat back your exercise cals when you get more active?

Exactly hun, 5ft 2, sedentary (even though many people think i am likely more active coz of my boys but they only know the half of it) but i plan on exercising. The main reason am doing this is i have a large muscle mass actually. I tend to gain alot of muscle when am exercising, and easily grow big even when i lose weight. So am trying to lose some weight first, keeping my muscle mass normal(though some think otherwise), then when i start exercising, i can control how much muscle i gain, because i will be able to see that clearly without much fat in the way

Okay I get that you percieve that you gain weight as muscle but i thought the same but have been here long enough to learn that simply isn't so. It's probably more of that when we lose weight the fat and water leaves and our big muscles get exposed. Mine are in my thighs and behind. WHen eating at a deficit it is hard to put on muscle. So even if you eat more and exercise and stay with 1200 as your NET cals you will still likely not put on very much muscle. I actually do beleive I have the same "problem" if one could call it that as you, in my thighs but I choose to look at it as a plus and focus my workouts on things that will build them a little or just keep them understanding now that it is very hard to build muscle on a deficit and I hope that my efforts to preserve them result in a ratio of fat to muscle that allows my body to burn more calories at rest. Turn that muscle situation to your advantage and don't fear the big muscles, most guys think they are sexy and it's hard for them to get really big anyways. IT just won't happen. Feel free to FR me just to be in the same boat but I am in no way an expert to guide you but just a fun friend to have with a little bit in common. Mom, muscles that grow, shorty, and etc.

I am sorry. I really did think it was a troll thread. When I read the name, "My Fitness Pal" and people seem focused on weight loss without exercise, I often think they are just inflammatory threads. I didn't meant offend you. I truly thought you were trying to stir the pot. My apologies! For real!

1200 calories is like....breakfast.

All i can say is thank god i powerlift.

A-Freaking-Men! I do a mix of bodybuilding/powerlifting (<3 PHAT) and during the times when I was really working to add size and strength I'd be putting away 1400 calories worth of oat protein pancakes before a training session. God I can't wait for bulking season to come round again!


To the OP:

First of all, congrats on the initial loss - a positive result right from the start always gets the motivation up good and proper. I'm glad as well that you have acknowledged that a good portion of that loss would be attributed to water weight coming off - a common product of a major change in eating habits (2000 calories to 1200 is a reduction of 40%). It sounds like your food choices are quite healthy and continuing to do what you're doing will likely result in continued, albeit smaller loss. Over time, you may notice that your weight loss is slowing down or stalling completely. You may also start finding yourself constantly feeling hungry or getting fatigued quicker and just not having the energy you had when starting on the 1200 calorie diet. These are the sorts of things that some people (not all) can experience when aiming for a really aggressive calorie goal.

When I started out in January 2012 I was eating 1200 calories a day. Why? Cause MFP set it as that as I was trying to lose the most amount of weight as quickly as possible. For me setting it to lose 2lbs per week set me to 1200 calories before exercise calories. As I didn't know any better, I did what MFP said and ate 1200 calories. I lost almost 7lbs in my first week and was so happy that this diet was working. I continued to eat 1200 calories for a few weeks and kept losing weight however, nowhere near as much as the first week but I was still happy with the progress. After about a month I started finding myself hungry for long stretches during the day, sometimes even had pain in my stomach on a couple of occasions. I also noticed my workouts starting to lack intensity and even just focusing on things at work became more difficult but I kept pushing on with 1200 calories cause it was working.

A couple of weeks later at a weigh in, my weight had not decreased from the previous week. Wasn't happy but chalked it up as a off week and went back to business. The next week I weighed in and was the same again. Now I started to get a bit concerned. I was following the same diet and exercising just as much but I wasn't any weight anymore. I decided to check out some resources here in the MFP forums as well as other sites and basically the feedback I got was that I wasn't eating enough and I needed to up my calories so I changed the MFP settings to lose 1lb per week which put me on 1800 calories. Started eating the higher calories straight away and within a day was feeling much more energetic. The lingering feeling of hunger was gone and in general I felt a lot better. Then came weigh in.

I had gained 2lbs which was more than I'd lost in the 3 weeks prior. Seeing that number frustrated and demotivated me big time and made me want to drop my calories down, but after remembering what I had read about sometimes needing to eat more to lose weight, I stuck with the 1800 calories. Went through my week, did all my workouts which were all at a much better level of intensity by the way and got to the next weigh in.

3lbs down! Turns out that 2lb gain was due to the big jump in calories (1200 to 1800) with the diet change. I continued on eating around 1800 a day for about 3 months and lost around 45lbs. Since then I've gained and lost weight due to doing small bulk and cuts but for the most part have kept that 45lbs off.

These days I don't use MFP to calculate my intake, I use a TDEE calculator and make the daily calorie target changes based on whether I'm trying to gain muscle mass (add 10-15% to TDEE), lose body fat (subtract 10-20% from TDEE) or just maintain my weight (use TDEE).

Now you're probably sitting there wondering what relevance this is to you, right? Very little really. It's my story, my experience of eating far below what I should have been simply because I was in a rush to lose weight. I'm not saying that what I experienced will happen to you - you may do great on 1200 calories and not have any problems whatsoever just like other people here that have reached their goals by following the 1200 calorie target. What I'm just trying to point out is that if you start noticing things like constant hunger, fatigue, slowed or stalled weight loss, then maybe you need to re-think your plan of attack. All the best

Congrats on your loss.

I am losing on 1600/day (more when I exercise) while enjoying my very high in sugar :devil: White Mocha. Gonna stick to my plan!!

I wonder how you lose on high sugar. If I did that, my weight would escalate. I drink my tea and coffee with no sugar. Have you heard about insulin resistance? you should check it out!

I am type 2 diabetic and have never tracked a single gram of sugar and have lost a few pounds... sugar is not the enemy it is made out to be, even to diabetics.. It is more important to eat a well balanced diet and keep an eye on Carbs, Proteins, and Fats and yes you can still fit in a few discretionary items... I just had a bowl of Reese's cup chocolate ice cream for my dessert. I hit my macro's and had calories left over so ice cream it was... My A1c's have averaged 5.3 the past 2 years.... I also lost the majority of my 312 pounds eating over 3500 calories a day, you don't have to severely restrict yourself to lose weight...

THIS guy. knows his stuff. Other than that, wayyy too much misinformation out here on the threads...but thats the whole point of this is suppose...people are here to learn and develop individually...

You have to find what works for you but I know that I find it hard as I am so short and need fewer calories!

Just for the record, I lost 60 lbs eating 1200 calories a day and I haven't even gained a pound back. Some of you guys just need to take a seat and let people do whatever they feel they need to do. It's their body, not yours!

You do know on a deficit you wont gain muscle at all right?

Untrue. If you get enough protein and do strengthening exercises, you will gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

You do know that while you are on a deficit & NOT working out at all you are actually losing that muscle as well & wont gain it back till you eat MORE than you are supposed to.....you know that right?

Anyway good luck with that, you are gonna need it. Most of us have been there & done that & no way in hell is 1200 'the best thing ever & we should try it'. But you will learn.

If you eat more than your are supposed to, you will gain fat.

:noway:

1. noob gains (some muscle growth is possible in a deficit initally, but this stops after a short time)
2. increased blood flow within the muscles combined with increased storage of glycogen (and therefore water) within the muscle causes an increase in size that's often mistaken for muscle growth. this is known as "pump" in bodybuilding terms, and is frequently mistaken for muscle growth. Again, the muscle will not get bigger indefinitely from this, and in fact the pump goes away if you don't continue to work out regularly. This is the reason why a lot of women stop strength training, thinking that they put muscle on really, really easily and will turn into the incredible hulk if they continue. You can see a pump sometimes even after just a few workouts. I saw this in my shoulders and upper arms after just 1 week of stronglifts, but I knew it wasn't real muscle growth, just "pump"
3. after a pump and noob gains, you won't see your muscles get visibly bigger while eating at a deficit. Real growth of actual muscle tissue is really difficult to achieve, it requires a lot of training and eating at a surplus, and a lot of patience because it's slow for men to grow muscles, and even slower for women.

So there are lots of reasons why someone might think that they're growing muscle at a deficit beyond noob gains and muscle memory gains, but really it is extremely difficult to build new muscle tissue even eating at a surplus, especially if you're female. It's only when you have that as your primary goal that you realise just how difficult. You see a pump quickly, you see an increase in lean body mass from glycogen quickly, maybe you see some noob gains but all that stops and after that it's really, really difficult beyond those things, because after that the only thing that's going to make your muscles bigger is new muscle tissue.


BTW also this topic
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/996906--you-can-t-build-muscle-on-a-calorie-deficit



Yep NEXT :noway: