Friend suggests 1200 calories. Is this too little?

Go with what MFP suggests. A lot of people see "1200" almost like a buzz word. Your gut is pretty much spot on, faster results but less likely to be long-term results.

Get a food scale, weigh and log your food - remember, it was the tortoise, not the hare that won the race!

go with the 1600, if you start with 1200 you cant cut you calorie intake at any point as there's nowhere healthy to go
also you will burn more if you are active
if its a mind set issue set your target at 1500 and if you go over its not bad

1200 is often too low for many ( unless the person is really tiny, old, short)
1600 is much more sustainable. You will lose weight as long as your at a deficit. To make sure your really at a deficit, its important to use a food scale

Unless your friend is a registered dietitian... NEVER listen to your friends when it comes to diets... ever.

I tried doing 1200 in the beginning. Absolute hell. Temptation to chew my hands off was a regular lol stick with what the app says

mrscartguy wrote: »

MFP has me at 1200 calories and it is tough. I go over every day and I am hungry!!!!

What did you enter as your goal rate of loss for each week?

janejellyroll - I put in for 1.5 lbs a week. Is that to much? Should I change it? I am new to this.

MFP calculated my daily calories at 1,200 only...I am 5'9", 47 years old (not tiny, old, short as thorsmom implies) but only trying to lose about 5 pounds (office job so I chose "sedentary" as lifestyle). I synched mapmyrun so that the workouts come over and it calculates the goal as 1,200 plus workouts which is probably close enough, 1600/day or so.

If you are bigger, farther away from your healthy weight, your body burns more calories just by existing, and your exercising burns more calories, and running a bigger deficit isn't healthy or sustainable, you want your body to slowly burn off fat and build some muscle, not freak out. Eat more and log it so you have data, see how it goes, if you are losing slowly over time that's the right amount, especially if your measurements are shrinking; but that "right amount" will get smaller as you do, your eventual maintenance amount may be smaller than what you can eat now and lose weight eating.

I don't believe in crash diets with the goal of upping food intake at a later time. If you want to weigh x, eat as much food as somebody who already weighs x should eat. Your body will naturally gravitate towards that body weight over time, and when you get there you won't need to adjust your food intake at all, it'll already be a lifestyle.

(There's no way on God's green earth I could get away with 1200 for an extended period of time. My lunches alone typically hover around 1000 (on a 2k limit).)

I can't speak in general facts, only anecdotally: I told MFP I wanted to lose 1.5 pounds a week, and it set me to 1200. Even after adding back in exercise calories, every morning I woke up exhausted, and every day I felt like I was starving and wanted to rip everyone's face off. My skin even looked terrible. So I decided to eat more and just be more patient and realistic about shedding the bit of extra weight I have left to lose.

I think 1200 is ok if you don't have much to lose, your tiny and you're relatively sedentary (just my opinion).

MFP defaulted me to 1200 calories, but the Scooby calculator gives me 1355. I eat somewhere in the middle of that.

Some people are terrible loggers so they think they have to eat 1200 calories to lose weight, when in actuality they are eating much more than they think.