1,200 Calorie Daily Goal Question

I've heard enough comments from people about my eating habits to make me swear off talking about my eating habits. When people ask how I'm losing weight, all I tell them is, "Eating less."

I see posters with high counts in this thread yet wrong information getting pushed through?

15,000 steps is NOT sedentary and is NOT lightly active.
15,000 steps challenges and at times surpasses MFPs VERY ACTIVE setting.

No need to believe me, even though I regularly get extra calories over and above MFP's very active setting once i hit 15,000 steps... there exist published studies that back up 12,500 steps as a cut off for labelling someone "very active" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14715035

1200 Calories is MFPs minimum.
If you've told MFP you want to lose 2lbs a week, which means a deficit of 1000Cal a day, MFP will spit out 1200Cal regardless of whether it thinks you will lose 1g or 907.2g, i.e. regardless of what it ACTUALLY thinks your deficit will be.

Here is an imaginary progression:
Sedentary NEAT 1700
Lightly Active NEAT 1900
Active NEAT 2100
Very active NEAT 2300
MFP (assuming you ask for 2lbs a week) will keep spitting out 1200 Cal until you hit "very active". At very active it will spit out 1300.

Note MFP base setup assumes NEAT and expects you to eat back 100% of your ACTUAL calories spent on purposeful exercise over and above your NEAT.

Note that substituting TDEE for NEAT above works perfectly fine (in fact I do it all the time) and is what happens when you connect your Fitbit/device to MFP. The "exercise" adjustment you get from Fitbit is NOT AN EXERCISE. It is the difference between what MFP predicted your TDEE was going to be and what Fitbit/or device calculated your TDEE to be during the day.

Having said the above. In part your 1200 Cal target is predicated on your choice of 2lbs a week as your deficit. A deficit that is appropriate for someone who is morbidly obese. Is it actually appropriate for YOU?

You are trying to create a deficit that is LARGER than 25% of your TDEE AND you're trying to lose more than 1% of your bodyweight a week.

NEITHER is great!

20% deficit off their actual TDEE is just about as much as most people should be trying to lose at. 25% if they are classified as obese and have the fat deposits that go with that classification.

While we're throwing random studies around here's one that discusses a rate of loss of 0.7% per week as more muscle sparing than a rate of loss of 1.4% a week. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21558571

In closing and in brief.
1200 is not always necessary to lose weight.
While 1200 MAY be necessary to lose weight fast, losing weight fast is not always good.

Note that small deficits make it very difficult to discern weight loss.
High levels of exercise make it very difficult to discern weight loss.
Monthly cyclical weight fluctuations make it very difficult to discern weight loss.

A lot of people would benefit from using a trending weight application or web site to get a better understanding of their weight level as opposed to relying on weight "snapshots" at single points of time.

If you look through the forums carefully, for all the many (usually) ladies who swear that 1200 is the only way they can lose weight you will also find some brave, and at times very hard working, women who lose weight at more than 1200. And yes, some relatively very few people who due to health and physical limitations have no option but to lose at 1200, or less.

comom23 wrote: »

Thanks for comments! Nice to have a place to ask questions. I stumble to react to people's strong reactions to my calorie consumption:) I just switched my activity level to lightly active and I'm still at 1,200 calories, so sticking with it. Once I got used to weighing and tracking food, it's really not so difficult.

Probably because of the rate of loss you entered. Did you say 2 pounds per week? MFP will go no lower than 1200 for women, so even if the math doesn't add up for you to lose 2 lbs per month, 1200 is still your allowance.

The suggested rate of loss per week depends on how much you have to lose. The less to lose, the smaller the loss per week. Less than 25 lbs, then .5 pounds per week (ish).

Many people come on and want to lose as fast as possible, but that's not necessarily the healthiest nor the most sustainable way.

See what works and be honest with yourself.