1200 calories/day is SO HARD, can anyone share their meal plan?

1200 is probably too low unless you are morbidly obese or have serious complications from your weight that are more dangerous than the negative effects of a VLCD monitored by a physician.

I aim to eat 1500 a day and I can't really do anything for 12 weeks as I've broke my wrist but in the last two weeks I've lost just under 6lbs and all I've been doing is squats

Breakfast weetabix or strawberries with low fat yogurt
Lunch apple orange boiled eggs or cream crackers
Tea tuna salad, steak and veg, omelette

That's what I aim to eat anyway with snacks inbetween such as nuts, and belvita biscuits to top my calories up this is more-less my diet plan. It's working for me at the moment

It just depends what you can eat and what you can't eat

That's interesting

I'm 5'2. My weight loss seemed to slow down on 1,200 calories a day.

So for the last week and a half I've tried the 5:2 diet. 2 days of 500 calories ( essentially Weetabix for breakfast and Weetabix for supper) and then 1,500 calories other days

I don't know how long I'll do this for, but for now it seems to have kick started me back into losing

I'm 5'6 and i've been eating 1200 a day since may this year and have lost 47lb. I generally have just a latte for breakfast (never been able to stomach food early in the morning) but for the amount of calories i have you could have a cereal bar, 2 slices of weight watchers bread toasted with light butter or something similar around 150kcal and a piece of fruit. For lunch i have either a wrap with lots salad and a few slices of ham and light ceaser salad dressing, or a sandwich, with a packet of velvet light crisps and a time out choc bar, then for dinner you can have almost anything as long as you weigh food into proper portions and bulk it out with salad or veggies, and most importantly dont deny yourself anything, its ok to cheat every now and then if say you go for a meal with friends or fancy a naughty treat, as long as you stick to your plan for the rest of the week, some days i cant even fit in enough food to make my calorie goal as im so full, hope this helps

I try to be approx. 1200 when I'm dieting, except I do a fair bit of exercise, so take more when I need to. Plenty of veg and protein works - if I don't do that I end up feeling hungry. You can see my food diary for the last 10 days I've been logging again

ht1211 wrote: »

I'm 5'1, 32, female, and I'm 15 lbs away from my goal.
The first 12 lbs took me 4 months. And I actually gained 5 of those back, and spend another month and a half to get rid of it. So I've been going at this for almost 6 months now, and I'm getting vey impatient.
I'm having a lot of problem staying within the 1200 calories/day diet. The only time I could do it is when I did a lot of exercise, so I have extra calories to work with. But I can't exercise that much everyday, and on the days I didn't exercise enough, I can't seem to stay in my calorie goal. Part of the problem is that I don't want to keep eating the same stuff everyday.
Does anyone have a good 1200 meal plan that's simple to follow?
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack...
Any idea will help.
Thanks

I know you're fairly petite, but the real question is, how quickly are you trying to lose that final 15lbs?

I'm not sure what your BMR/TDEE is, but it might be worth looking into. With so little weight to go, you're likely already at or near a healthy range for your height and frame, which means that you need to lose slowly to do it in a sustainable manner. The closer you get to your goal weight, you should be moving gradually towards maintenance calories.
I know you're already fed up with how long it's taken, but the reality is, you didn't put on the weight this quickly and you need to take it off slowly unless you want to just yo-yo diet for the rest of your life. With 10-15lbs to go, most people are losing around 0.5lbs per week, 0.75lbs at most.

That being said, you should develop your own meal plan that includes foods you love that are filling; think high fiber veggies and the like. One of my favourite lunches is half an acorn squash with a bit of margarine, salt, and pepper with a small portion of lean meat. It's probably one of the most filling lunches I make.

Avoid things like liquid foods -- smoothies for example. While they can have good nutrition, they often just end up being high in calories without leaving you with the full feeling that food you actually chew and digest from solid will.

Also, look into foods like greek yogurt (individual servings are about 100cals depending on your brand) and skim/1% milk cheese strings. Likely, at 1200 calories, you've been neglecting your protein which has left you feeling unsatisfied and hungry.

How aggressively is your goal set? Also, can you open your diary?

It's so hard to be short -- so few calories to work with! I'm 5'3" and still significantly overweight, but I've lost nearly 75lbs (slowly...over 2.5 years) netting about 1400-1500 cals/day. If I go down to 1200 I'm so hungry it's just a recipe for failure. For me a lot of it has to do with what I eat rather than how many calories. I try to get plenty of protein, fiber, and healthy fats and I find I'm less hungry that way. I try to save 200 cals for an evening snack...keeps me from grazing too much at night. I also try to burn about 1000 cals/week with exercise so I have a little extra to work with. For me that means running 3 times a week and doing some weight training.

KylaDenay wrote: »

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

How aggressively is your goal set? Also, can you open your diary?

This.

I am 5'3 and have around 15-17 lbs to go. I am eating to lose .5 lbs a week and was given 1520 calories by MFP.

Those extra two inches give you a lot more. Using MFP calculations, 5'1 sedentary around this weight (I'm assuming 130 lbs) wouldn't lose anything at 1500 calories.

SusanjaneClark wrote: »

I'm using Optifast (very low calorie program, as recommended by my Doctor - 800 calories per day) as I've lost weight well with this in the past. I've found that when I've kept really tightly to the Optifast guidelines (that is, no milk in tea or coffee, really strict adherence to allowed/restricted foods), the diet has been easier to follow and I feel less hungry. I wonder if that's because I've gone into ketosis more effectively and so am burning fat to keep hunger pangs at bay. Even milk in tea/coffee seems to make the diet harder to follow... although the coffee definitely tastes better! In my 'real life' I'm a complete carbs addict, so this was quite a strange discovery for me. Just a thought...

Ugh! This is horrible advice.

OptiFast (Dr. supervised) should be reserved for the morbidly obese. OP is not anywhere near morbidly obese.

OP - I agree with others. Yes you are petite.....but the over riding factor is your age. You are young....you can eat more and lose weight. Petite senior ladies may qualify for 1200.

Why would you want to lose weight more slowly? To keep lean muscle mass & lose a higher percentage of fat. The closer you are to goal, the higher risk you are for lean muscle loss.

If you can't exercise much that's another thing working against keeping lean muscle. Try add some resistance training if you can. That signals your body....hey I'm using those muscles.