Females trying to lose weight...READ THIS

I don’t know why “1200″ managed to be the magic number of calories women should consume if they want to lose weight.

I don’t even know how I know of this number. Only that I know it, and my friends know it, and my mom knows it. Somehow, somewhere along the road, I was taught that if I want to have a flat stomach and tight tushy, I need to limit my calories to 1200 a day and do cardio. I don’t know how it got in to all of our collective brains, but somehow it did (if any ladies remember how or when they first heard the 1200-calorie rule-of-thumb for losing weight, please let me know via comment box).

What I do know is that 1200 is the general number of calories health professionals say women cannot drop below without suffering negative health consequences.

Interesting, isn’t it? 1200 calories. The line between health and what they call “starvation mode”. 1200 calories. The dangerous tightrope that many women are trying to walk, because they think this is how thinness is achieved.

“Starvation mode”
means your body realizes it is not getting enough food – calories-, thinks that you are starving, and slows down your metabolism to a crawl to conserve energy. Because it thinks you are starving, when you do feed yourself, your body will try to store more of your calories as fat, because those are your long-term energy deposits.

A long term calorie deficit can mess with your blood sugar levels, reduce bone mass, cause weakness, fatigue, cold intolerance, irregular menstrual periods, dizziness, constipation and swelling of the hands and feet (source). If a woman decides to get thin by maintaining a steep calorie deficit (1200 calories is very steep) and pairs it with long sessions of steady-state cardio, it results it thyroid issues. “Too little T3 (hypothyroidism), and the body accumulates body fat with ease, almost regardless of physical activity level. Women inadvertently put themselves into a hypothyroid condition when they perform so much steady-state cardio” (source).

Women: If you are trying to go about your business during the day, on only 1200 calories, and perform cardio to burn those dreaded calories, you really are not going to succeed. You will most likely pass out.