please visit my diary page, positive criticism please

What is your goal? Calories you "should" be eating is highly subject to what you wish to acheive. Though, if you feel sluggish, you likely aren't eating enough.

ETA-Based on your stats, using a calculator I enjoy, puts you at a calorie target of 1430 and still maintain good, progressive weight loss.

Erm, your diary is private

1200 calories seems really low. I'm 20 years older than you and 10 pounds lighter, and eat around 1400-1500 calories a day and still lose. It's still not a lot of food and no room for "extras", but if I eat enough protein and fiber it's generally enough to keep my energy level high.

You might want to calculate your TDEE and then eat at a 20% deficit or so, and see how you feel.

Mess with your macro ratios...Jack up the protein and reduce the fat. Lower fat diets allow you to eat more because of the caloric difference between a fat and a carb/protein. Its not exclusively about deficit....especially if you aren't losing the weight or making your goals.

I am not suggesting that IS the answer, but it's trial/error for every person on here...so you gotta make changes until you see that scale drop or what is the point?

It's tough to say for certain without knowing your bodyfat %, but you are likely in the 30-40% bodyfat range and maintaining in a sedentary state at 1700-1850 calories per day. As you lose or gain weight, your maintenance calories and macros will change.

More activity would benefit you a lot. Try to set aside at least 30 minutes for exercise every day or every other day.

As far as diet, in order to lose weight safely, you need to consume 10-20% less than your maintenance calories.

You are also undereating dietary fat by quite a bit, which has been proven by scientific research to be quite unhealthy.

Dietary fat: Minimum of 0.40-0.45 grams per 1 lb. bodyweight

You're definitely aiming to lose weight too aggressively if you don't feel well. It's not a race to the finish line!

If I were you, I'd up my calories to 1500 (I plugged your data into an online calculator), and follow sixxpoint's recommendations to increase your dietary fat intake. You'll probably need to drop your carbohydrate intake to do this. Don't drop your protein intake as it's pretty low already. You might want to up it, in fact. Dieters need more protein than the average person in order to preserve lean muscle mass as they are losing weight.

When you diet, you lose fat and muscle. Eating more protein and doing some form of resistance training helps to minimize the amount of muscle tissue lost. Losing weight slowly also minimizes this as well.

Track oil. Oil is fat and it's roughly 120 calories per tbsp.

truediamond11 wrote: »

Hey there, I have been eating 1200 ish calories for few days but feel really sluggish and nauseous. I am 5.2'' and weigh 80 kilos ( 176 pounds). Almost sedentary , 27 yr old and mother to an almost 2 yr old. Can you also suggest the calories I should be eating?

I have had 4 children.
I assure you, mothering a 2yr old does not qualify for a sedentary lifestyle.
If the car isn't running well.....maybe you haven't put enough gas in.

I would suggest as others have said about bumping up the calories a little bit. I also noticed that you tend to have the bulk of your calories around dinner time....about 500-600. How are you feeling after dinner? If you're feeling ok up until bed time then maybe you could add some additional calories in the moring and lunch time. So if you did roughly 500 calories 3 x day maybe you wouldn't constantly be feeling hungry and week. Play around with it. Nothing is set in stone. I like to say the best diet is the one you can stick with. We all want to lose weight but we also don't want to be too aggressive and quit either.

I'm doing between 1200-1300 calories. I don't have it set in stone. If I'm a little bit hungrier a particular day then I bump it up a little bit. There are days where I've have 1350 but as long as I'm still losing weight consistently I don't worry about it. I exercise almost everyday for 30 min. It doesn't give me a lot of extra calories but it does help. I started out with only 300 calories for breakfast but then I noticed I had a difficult time making it until lunch so I now do 400 calories (roughly) at each meal. Its actually helped a lot. My point is...play around with it and add some calories to your day if you need to. I bet you'll still lose weight. But the key is to NOT make yourself suffer....you'll never last on a diet that way.

truediamond11 wrote: »

Hey there, I have been eating 1200 ish calories for few days but feel really sluggish and nauseous. I am 5.2'' and weigh 80 kilos ( 176 pounds). Almost sedentary , 27 yr old and mother to an almost 2 yr old. Can you also suggest the calories I should be eating?

No diet type is good or bad. We can't tell you what you should or should not be eating.

If you feel sluggish and nauseous, you should probably be (1) eating more than 1200 ish calories and (2) paying a visit to your doctor.