The 1200 calorie limit is too high for me

amyoliver85 wrote: »

Hiya, Teabea is pretty close. But really 1200 calories is about the low limit for SURVIVAL. And that's only supposed to be a short term solution. When you eat 1,200 or fewer calories per day over the long term your metabolic rate slows down and your body starts to go into starvation mode. This means that (1) you're not burning fat anymore because your body is holding onto it for dear life (literally), and (2) your body start burning muscle, so you get left with...FAT. And when your body holds onto every little bit of fat that you put in, you'll start getting...fatter.

This article on Pop Sugar does a pretty good job of explaining that: http://www.popsugar.com/fitness/Why-1200-Calories-Day-Important-When-Dieting-13080864

And it's important to know what your personal burn rate is. Just being alive every day and going to work and not doing anything special, I burn about 1,575 calories. So just to get through the day I need that many calories to fuel my body. If I put a deficit in that by working out, I never let it get below 1,200 and I usually eat more than that. If you're starting with a goal of 1,200 per day and then you work out, you HAVE TO EAT BACK those exercise calories or you'll starve your body.

Knowing what your personal burn rate is is really the better way to determine how much of a deficit you can create in the short term to burn calories. But that also won't help you burn fat.

Burning fat is about bigger changes. You have to increase your muscle mass which means that you need to lift weights. You have to change your eating habits. When I first started getting into all of this many years ago, I thought calories in/calories out was the only way to look at things, so even if I ate 500 calories of crap, I called it good. But that doesn't work. Proper nutrition is essential to cleansing your body and ensuring that all of your systems are in peak performance.

I also would like to suggest that you consider the reality that the last 5 pounds is going to be harder anyway because it's been sitting around longer. I once saw some fat cells. The ones that had been starved by proper nutrition and exercise were withering and brown and they were easy to get rid of. The new ones were small, so they were easy to turn into brown ones. But then there were these huge ones. And they had been growing for years...you have to make them smaller before they can go away. And the bigger they are, the more stubborn they are.

Also...going back to metabolic rate, know that your age does have something to do with it, but when you're losing weight your metabolic rate also can decrease. So essentially, losing weight makes you less efficient at losing weight. Pretty cruddy, but true. But that doesn't mean that you get to eat way less than everybody else. You do get to eat less, but frankly your metabolism is probably higher when you're active and lighter, so it all evens out.

Sorry for the diadem. Please feel free to friend me. I've got a martial arts/personal fitness boyfriend, I'm a homeopath, and we're both dead set on fit living and getting to all of our goals so we're always happy to help.