1200 calories is HARD...

Another one of these threads.. really?? 1200 calories is hard... ya ok..

It is hard to believe that someone could exercise like a maniac and eat 800 calories and not lose weight, but untreated or UNDER-treated hypothyroidism will do just that! Before I got my levels sorted out I couldn't lose a LB! It is incredible frustrating! It is hard to believe if you haven't been there.

As far as not hitting 1200 calories-you obviously have to change up what you are eating. I find when you eat in a very regimented way (dieting) you can slowly go lower and lower calorie or crab-wise. I myself had to add fruit back into my diet because my carbs were creeping below 30g/day which is too low especially since I work out 5-6 times a week. PEANUT BUTTER!

Also I agree about cutting out diet food. If the food you like don't keep you as full-eat more...this should help if you are having trouble ingesting enough calories.

I'm really not trying to be snarky, but I don't understand these posts. If it's so hard to reach the measly sum of 1200 calories, how come you have weight to lose?

I'm at 1200 right now and I haven't had dinner yet.

I have hypothyroidism and am pre-diabetic. I've always struggled with my weight and my family has a lot of issues. My cholesterol is through the roof and has been since I was 21 so I've been conscious of food for a long time. Eating has never been a problem for me, and I've never been really excited about it. Quite frankly I don't care about food and until I started running 25 miles a week, did Insanity and WW with out loosing a lb, I started tracking EVERYTHING that went into my mouth. That is when I realized I was averaging 800 calories a day and had to add food to my diet. The stuggles go both ways.

so you were averaging 800 calories a day with running 25 miles a week and did insanity and didn't lose any weight ... are you sure? Is that net calories?

Hypothyroidism and prediabetes makes you less hungry and makes you not use the fuel you are having, it slows you metabolism down so you down burn the calories. Because of the slow metabolism the 1200 calories may be all her body requires for running like a maniac.

the thing is 800 calories is really very little and the reason I asked about net calories is because with all that running and other aerobic exercise that looks like at least 400 cals a day or maybe more.

I get that those conditions mentioned affect the metabolism, so you then have far less room for error. If she averaged 800 cals and did not count in exercise calories that would mean that her actual average after counting in exercise might have been as low as 400 - 500 cals, which seems really unlikely considering that she did not lose any weight, not even a little.

If she counted her exercise calories then it is quite possible that through an accumulation of little errors she actually consumed more and burnt less and because her metabolism is what it is she actually ate at maintenance. Yes her maintenance might be stupidly low for her stats, but 800 cals ???

As an example:
she could log 1300 cals food and 500 cals exercise, bringing her net calories to 800. Now, if she was out by 200 cals with the food for whatever reason, and her exercise calories where out by 300 cals, because ultimately the estimates of calorie burns assumes a normal metabolism, she actually consumed 1500 cals and had 200 cals exercise thus bringing over all consumption to 1300 calories, which, whilst still low, is more realistic.

I personally would get the hypothyroidism treated and see whether adopting the diabetes diet and meticulous logging shows any change, but that's just my 0.2