Wrk out 5x's a wk eat 1200 cals but gaining lbs HELP!

I'm going to tell you about my first time losing a grip of weight...

I don't know about your body stats but
I was 20, 5'2", 160+lbs and in the military. I was actually weighed at work & was massively over my max allowable body weight (140lbs) for my height. I was immediately put on a pre cursor to what is unofficially known as the "Fat Girl/Boy Program". I had to meet with a nutritionist every week and log each. and. every. calorie. I was to be weighed & taped once a month. I also had to track my exercise.
I had to start exercising.
This was in 2002 and at the time the AF didn't mandate group PT and our annual physical assessment test consisted of doing 60 push ups in 2min, 60 sit ups in 2min and riding a stationary bike for an uncertain amount of time until your heart rate reached whatever it was supposed to be (the bike test info was murky to most). Suffice it to say that it was not a great test of physical fitness and really didn't encourage members to lead an active lifestyle.

I freaked out because I could have been kicked out of the military for this. So I committed. HARD.

I started logging everything. I was given a little Excel style chart and had to document the food, amount, calories. My total calorie max was 1200 cal to start with. Yes this is a little on the low side and my nutritionist told me that on days that I would work out to eat 1500 cal.
I didn't listen to her.

I started out on the elliptical. I (eventually) worked myself up to 1hr on the elliptical & 15min walking/cool down on a treadmill. I would do this at least 5x a week and usually took the weekends off.

I didn't see scale/tape movement until the end of my second month. But once I saw movement it went fast. I ended up losing about 30lbs in just shy of 4 months.

I stuck to 1200cal for the first 2 months w/ my workouts and even started dipping into dangerously low cal counts (800 one day!) thanks to the AF nutritionist I was yelled at (aka "counseled") and started sparingly eating cheese & PB again to hit my 1200cal as a min. By the end of my third month I was eating closer to 1500/1600 a day & wouldn't track at all on weekends.

I typed this all just to say... If you want to do 1200cal and can maintain it (and not get crazy low like I did) go for it. But know that it won't, and in my opinion shouldn't, be sustainable. If you need that limitation to start seeing movement I think it's ok. But 4 weeks is not enough time mama. Give yourself at least 8 weeks then adjust.

Just my $0.02

IMHO 1200 calories is far too low. You are likely stalling your metabolism and making further weight loss difficult. I would add more calories but look how your macros (protein, fat, carbs) are coming into play. Keep protein high to support muscle (more muscle present means more fat burned) time your carb intake to right when you wake up or right before/after you workout, and keep fat to under 20-25% of your total caloric intake.

Being smart about what you are eating can often be more important than how much you eat. Good luck!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for not saying starvation mode . . . I cannot stress this enough!

OP - so basically if you're running on 1,200 calories/day and you made this switch from - let's say - 3,000 calories/day then at first you shocked your body into loosing a lot of weight because your body just isn't use to running on that little and of course you'll loose a lot. However, over time (and the amount of time is different for each person) your body will adapt to running on these calories so it's more efficient and works just as well without needing that many calories; your body learns to do basic, daily functions on 1,200 calories rather than on 3,00 when, at first, it was used to doing it on 3,000 calories so when it only got 1,200 there was a huge amount of energy needed to live and that resulted in a drop in weight.

What will then happen is if you increase dramatically for any reason, your body won't have a need for any extra calories and it'll be a gain for you, over your TDEE.

Further - are you sure you're eating what you track you're eating? No one will know but you, however being honest with yourself will give you the results you're looking for. If I eat a whole can of pringles, no one is going to come and scold me for it but I am scolding myself because the next day at the gym I feel so sluggish. You're only accountable to yourself, but this should be the most important thing you do. If you aren't honest about what you're eating, it just won't work. I am not saying eat this, not that - what you eat is up to you. But just be honest about it, log it, see how you feel about it in relation to the other things you eat and move on. Don't dwell on it and say since you ate that on Thursday, the whole week is done might as well wait until Monday. Naw - I've had days where I ate McDonald's for lunc and did spin at 5:30; those are the days I probably need it the most, too.

What kind of exercises are you doing? I also find MFP grossly, grossly over estimates the amount of calories it says you burn from various exercises.

Also, are you weight training? Simply put more muscle = more calorie burn, even at rest. So if you have more muscle you will burn more calories doing the same exercises. This can be helpful, depending on what your ultimate goal is; like if you want to run a marathon, weight training is pointless but some kind of cross training can be really helpful.

Last - but definitely certainly not least - it takes time. The weight didn't go on over night did it? Probably not (although it might seem like it some days), so it's not going to come off over night. It took me 2 years to lose and keep off 80 lbs (which was stage 1) and I still have 80ish to go. It takes so much effort and constant attention to your health to get back into it once you've gained it and I know it's hard because you think "Well it definitely didn't take this much effort to gain all of this, why does it take so much to lose it?" It's really hard to stay healthy sometimes with all the distractions and "cheats" out there, but stay positive - it will happen if you stick to it

Edited for my bad spelling

Lots of things that she said, plus a couple more. First, do not believe the "starvation mode" lie. If any of us are on here losing weight it is pretty safe to say that the word "starvation" cannot be applied to us. That said, your metabolism is incredibly efficent and will certainly adapt to your new caloric intake. If you have been eating and losing at 1200 calories (which can be, but is not necessarily too low for early weight loss) then give it more than a week before you freak out. If three weeks go by and the scale hasn't moved, try to confuse your metabolism a bit. When this happens to me I will do 2 weeks at 1200 and then a week at 1800. You are still at a deficit but your metabolism gets a jolt and starts moving again. Switching up your caloric intake week by week is helpful as long as you remain at some kind of deficit.

Also, DO NOT believe MFP when they tell you how many calories you are burning for a given activity. In my case, using heart rate monitoring, I have found that what they calculate is almost exactly double what my actual calorie burn is. So, if you are eating back the calories that MFP says you can, you are eating more than you are burning. If you eat at 1200 and then do an hour on the elliptical, MFP will tell you that you burned around 1000 calories! In truth, it will be something like 500-600. So if you eat back those 1000 calories then your net intake for the day is more like 1700, which isn't bad but isn't what you think it is. If you add to that how easy it is to forget to log little bits of food or misjudge portion sizes, you could be eating an extra 300 calories without knowing it and not be at a deficit at all.

If you determine that you are not mis-logging and not eating back extra calories, there are two more bits of good news. The first is that there is no way that eating well and exercising regularly will not improve your body composition. There are laws of nature that cannot be avoided and this is one of them. Just as you cannot eat pizza and ho-hos on the couch every day and expect to not get fat, the opposite is also true. It just doesn't always produce the desired scale reduction consistently.

The second is that in a weight loss journey, sometimes the weight is falling off in pounds and sometimes the fat is simply changing shape and becoming muscle, which makes you weigh the same but look much slimmer and shapelier. My friend and I had been doing 1200 calories a day and 3-5 weekly workouts. We were losing about 10 pounds per month when we decided to take it up a notch. We started doing Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. We just about killed ourselves doing it every single day and staying at 1200 net calories. We took pictures and weighed at the beginning. After one month of doing that, I weighed exactly the same as when I started and she had gained two pounds. We were literally ready to commit suicide by Oreo when we remembered to take "after" pictures. The difference was ridiculous. We had both lost several inches off our waist, We had visible ab improvement, We could literally feel bicep and thigh muscles that weren't there before, and our shirts were hanging on us. We didn't lose a pound, but we toned a ton of flabby fat into muscle which made us look a lot better and that muscle now helps us burn more calories every day.

So fear not, you have gotten a half dozen good "troubleshooting" techniques here. Follow up on them, but if you are logging everything and not eating back more exercise calories than you burn, the results will follow. A tiny bump in the scale at this point can feel so defeating. Just remember you are in it for the long haul and that in the end, the rules always win.