Hangry too often!

That's my first question as well. 1200 calories is the absolute minimum recommended without being under direct medical supervision--hopefully by "under" you mean only 10-50 calories under.

Maybe your target is set too low! What are your weight and height?

Honestly unless you are 4 foot tall 60 years old 90 pounds and sedentary you should probably be eating more than 1200 calories for weightloss. Im going to guess you are bigger than that so if you are hungry all the time eat more.

Hi Kazza.

How do you feel at 5000kj? Do you have fatigue, tiredness, dizziness or light headedness? Your body will tell you if you are not eating enough. As a comparison, I'm a 36yo male, I eat 5500kj in one meal once a day and I train for 7 hours a week. I don't feel hungry or tired - in fact I don't get sleepy in the afternoons anymore. What this means - if you are feeling good at 5000kj don't get stuck on numbers.

I'm afraid hunger is nothing but a mental thing. Our generation has been raised to fear hunger and fix it immediately with a convenient processed and packaged snack we can buy. You being hungry for that 1 day is nothing more than overcoming the messages you interpret to be fear. Instead of being afraid you can say to yourself "My stomach just rumbled which must mean I am now running entirely of my fat stores. Yippee!".

The best thing you can do is embrace it, ignore it and distract yourself.

Glenn.

What is "hangry"? Is that where you are so hungry that you are very irritable and angry hence hangry?

Yep you so hungry you are angry! lol

What is "hangry"? Is that where you are so hungry that you are very irritable and angry hence hangry?

I think you hit the nail on the head!

I think just have a small healthy snack. Carrots, 10 almonds, that type of thing. I doubt that would ruin your hard work and stop you getting hungry. This programme is not a perfect science. I believe I need a little more because my job is mentally straining, which I think = calories .
Also 1kg per week is quite high, I couldn't do that either, so I changed it to .75kg per week. You'll find you might lose a kg a week anyway Also if you have been losing for a while, it may start to slow down.

Your goal should not be 1200.

Your height is same as mine and I am 20 years older than you, only lightly active, and I started at 72 kg - to lose 0.2 kg/week it gives me 1440.

You are 20 years younger and starting at 111 kg - I'm not sure how you are getting 1200 unless you have put in aggressive goal like 1kg/week.
I'm sure you are also at least lightly active - Change your goal to a realistic rate and it will adjust your calories accordingly - and eat at least half of your exercise calories back as MFP intends you to do.

Me again!

Firstly Kazza... WELL DONE!! You have lost an average of 0.76kg per week! That's fantastic!!

5000kj is perfectly fine if you feel fine! Forget everyone telling you your BMI and cal/kj. The BMI calculator is a generalised algorithm invented in a prehistoric age and suits only a tiny group of calculator-ideal people. BMI is a good place to get a starting number and that's it. Research and test - which you've done over 17 weeks and have determined you have a good number that is working brilliantly for you!

As for your macros, you didn't list those but being MFP generated they will be based on the disproved and dangerous low fat diet. If you are wanting more consistent energy I would suggest you reverse it and choose the healthy levels we evolved to have:
Carbs: 30g
Protein: 75g
Fat: 87g

Almost everyone will be in shock with those figures. The percentages are based on human breast milk and body composition! I would never suggest to anyone they do something that I don't already do - and these are my percentages I have been using for 2 years. To get your energy stable you need to control your insulin ('sugar spikes'). Cut the carbs down to only green vegetables, berries and perhaps an apple or pear on the days where you just want something quick to get your carbs up. Use MFP to find fruit low in sugar. If you don't hit your daily carbs don't worry! Your body is perfectly capable of creating its own glycogen with fat and protein. The only problem is your body has to work a little harder... yay more fat loss!

Make sure a big part of your fat is saturated. Throw out any oil that starts with 'veg' and anything with 'seed' in the title. Saturated fat is the cleanest and most valuable fat your body can get. Use oils that are solid at room temperature - animal fat, dripping and coconut oil. To compare it to carbs, you get 9 calories (energy) per gram of fat but only 4 calories per gram of carbs (and protein). From the same weight you get more than twice the energy from fat with almost no by-product. If you were powering a house you wouldn't even consider paying more than twice as much on carbs! Your body is the same. You will also need a good healthy serving of mono-unsaturated. You can use cold pressed extra virgin Olive oil for this but drizzle it on your cooked meal - never apply heat to it.

As for protein - meat, broccoli and cheese. Use fatty cuts of meat, not the pure muscle of the animal which has no value in the wild. Chicken thigh, wings and drumsticks. Steak should be full fat mince or a heavily marbled cut like rib eye. Pork is excellent and bacon is near the perfect balance of fat and protein.

The fat will make you feel satiated the protein will fill you up, and the low level of carbs means you wont be bloated and gassy. Evolution, like all animals has a system. If you start eating meat and animal fat with little carbs your body will react chemically by shedding all the fat it stored over winter and start building muscle to make you a better hunter. As the animals you hunt get older and smarter you get leaner and stronger. Watch any documentary on Africa and you will see how evolution works. We are no different and need to move back to our roots. To complete the cycle, as Winter gets closer the animals move away either north or south and we are left foraging for roots, nuts, berries and flowers - carbs! Our body reacts chemically by converting those carbs to body fat and storing them ready to survive until next Sprint when the animals return. So you see, carbs are giving your body the wrong signals. It's time to hunt!

Now the last part... Intermittent Fasting! Do it! Do it! Do it! Read up on it, it's how we evolved and over the next 10-20 generations it will be the way everyone lives. If you think about it rationally, there's no way hundreds of thousands of years ago Man woke up to a refined carbohydrate breakfast, hung out until 10am for some cake then rested until it was time to eat at lunch. Man got up, and went looking for food and would not likely eat until the end of the day.
It's easy to start, just stop eating at 8pm after dinner and don't touch anything (except black coffee or tea) until 12pm the next day. After 12-14 hours your Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and testosterone levels will rise and start repairing and building your body. It will have the chance to replace cells marked to be replaced, repair any tissue damage and make you stronger in the muscles that you need. It's also shown to increase memory and mental alertness in mice (the theory there is you need to use your brain more when you are hungry to find and remember where food is). The best part is all this is done using your fat stores. In fact as soon as you eat your insulin goes up and HGH and Test go way down again for another 12-14 hours. At 12pm you will have the best meal of your life every day! Food tastes better and feels like fuel instead of the next meal. It's excellent at helping people detach themselves from food and learn that it's perfectly normal to be hungry. Even enjoyable!

That was quite a speel! I hope that makes sense and helps you understand the logic behind going against everything the big companies are telling us (and no doubt the 20 posts after this telling me I'm a crackpot and should be banned). The problem with eating clean and less often is no one can make money out of you so you will never see it advertised. You need to spend the time reading and researching. If you are happy with my ramblings you are welcome to message me privately.

Keep up the great work Kazza! You are rocking it!

Glenn.

I'm always hungry, because I love food and don't have an "off" button. I've learned that I won't die or even faint from being hungry. I may get grumpy, so I work on myself.

Go back and reset your goals, my dear. Change it to 1 pound a week and go with that. You'll see how much more doable it is and how much happier you'll be. As you lose weight, you'll have to reset anyway, and the thinner you are the less you get to eat, so enjoy every bite now while you can.