1200 calorie diet

emilyhultin
emilyhultin Posts: 38 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
i’m eating around 1200 calories a day, and doing exercise on top of that (running and weight lifting) and yet i still see the scale number going up occasionally. this is really discouraging me, does anyone know why this is happening?
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Replies

  • pinggolfer96
    pinggolfer96 Posts: 2,248 Member
    How are you tracking your food?
  • emilyhultin
    emilyhultin Posts: 38 Member
    pinggolfer96 wrote: »
    How are you tracking your food?

    tracking everything on mfp.
  • emilyhultin
    emilyhultin Posts: 38 Member
    malibu927 wrote: »
    emilyhultin wrote: »
    pinggolfer96 wrote: »
    How are you tracking your food?

    tracking everything on mfp.

    But how are you measuring your intake? Food scale? Measuring cups? Eyeballing portions?

    How long has your weight been increasing?

    mostly through measuring cups. i guess it hasn’t been increasing for that long, this could just be a little thing that needs to pass. idk.
  • collectingblues
    collectingblues Posts: 2,541 Member
    Is the exercise new? It's common to see a scale increase when you start a new exercise routine, because you're holding on to more water to repair your muscles. That'll pass in six weeks or so.
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    Are you logging and eating back the exercise calories?

    How much weight do you have to lose?

    What rate of loss did you choose?

    As mentioned above, weight can fluctuate for a lot of reasons, and logging accurately with a food scale will help ensure you aren’t eating more than you think. That said, 1200 is the lowest recommended goal for women and isn’t necessary to go that low for a lot of people in order to lose. Even if you do stick with it, it is a NET goal so if you exercise your should eat back some of those calories to keep the NET intake at 1200.
  • emilyhultin
    emilyhultin Posts: 38 Member
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    Are you logging and eating back the exercise calories?

    How much weight do you have to lose?

    What rate of loss did you choose?

    As mentioned above, weight can fluctuate for a lot of reasons, and logging accurately with a food scale will help ensure you aren’t eating more than you think. That said, 1200 is the lowest recommended goal for women and isn’t necessary to go that low for a lot of people in order to lose. Even if you do stick with it, it is a NET goal so if you exercise your should eat back some of those calories to keep the NET intake at 1200.

    i am logging exercises. i tend to have around 500-600 extra calories left at the end of the day. i want to lose about 10 more pounds.
  • whitpauly
    whitpauly Posts: 1,483 Member
    apullum wrote: »
    If you're using measuring cups and not seeing the weight loss you expect, then you're likely eating more than you think. Measuring cups are not ideal for solid food. Think about measuring a cup of dry rice. What does that full cup look like? Now imagine that you added a few more grains on top...then a few more...and a little more. Is it still a cup? You can pile quite a lot of rice on top of the cup without spilling any, but it's hard to say when it's no longer accurate to call it a cup. A scale removes this uncertainty.

    This is too true,I had bought some frozen lasagna and it said 1 cup serving size on the box,I crammed that lasagna into the measuring cu so tight! Had to be about 3 servings :D after that I started weighing and my eyes were defo opened
  • VUA21
    VUA21 Posts: 2,072 Member
    The less excess body fat you have, the harder it is to lose by weight. The closer you get to ideal, the more patient you need to be to get there. A better method would be to do weekly measurements (waist, hips, arms, thighs) as those numbers will probably change before any real change on a scale.
  • Silentpadna
    Silentpadna Posts: 1,306 Member
    emilyhultin wrote: »
    i’m eating around 1200 calories a day, and doing exercise on top of that (running and weight lifting) and yet i still see the scale number going up occasionally. this is really discouraging me, does anyone know why this is happening?

    There have been a lot of quick answers in this thread, but your post(s) lack context.

    One answer is obviously true, regardless of context. No matter what you do, the scale will go up occasionally. It always has and always will because the scale measures all of the components of your weight - including fluid, which fluctuates at a far bigger amplitude than any fat gain or loss. You need time....lots of it....to notice an actual trend. There's not enough information given to know whether you have established any trend.

    Other than that, your question needs more context, like:

    1. What is your current age/height/weight?
    2. How long have you been doing this?
    3. Where did your 1200 calories/day come from?
    4. How much weight do you have to lose and how much are you trying lose per week? (I think you answered 10 pounds already, which means it will be slow).
    5. How long have you been exercising and how much? If you are exercising "on top of" your 1200 calories, are you accounting for that in your intake? Hint: be careful with this!


    As others have said, there are many factors. As near as I can tell, I haven't seen a defined problem from your post because no matter what, the scale will fluctuate.
  • Nixonz
    Nixonz Posts: 16 Member
    Sometimes when weights are involved and trying to lose weight, just see how your clothes fit. That tells it all.
  • fb47
    fb47 Posts: 1,058 Member
    I cry when I hear someone eating for 1200 calories....I remember when on my cut last year, I ended my cut at 1800 (my usual cutting calories is at 2400) calories and I thought that felt like death, I couldn't imagine at 1200 calories. Thank god I was born a male with a high metabolism.
  • snemberton
    snemberton Posts: 175 Member
    fb47 wrote: »
    I cry when I hear someone eating for 1200 calories....I remember when on my cut last year, I ended my cut at 1800 (my usual cutting calories is at 2400) calories and I thought that felt like death, I couldn't imagine at 1200 calories. Thank god I was born a male with a high metabolism.
    Just another reason we females sometimes think about strangling you in your sleep. ;)

    However I do understand. Thanking my parents for their tall genes, so I get more to eat! At a deficit of 500-600 calories, most days that still allows me to eat almost 2000 calories a day. Maintenance will be 2500-2600, dependent on if my activity level stays the same or increases. I like cake, pie and brownies too much to go back to being sedentary. Well and I actually like exercise this time around.
  • fb47
    fb47 Posts: 1,058 Member
    snemberton wrote: »
    fb47 wrote: »
    I cry when I hear someone eating for 1200 calories....I remember when on my cut last year, I ended my cut at 1800 (my usual cutting calories is at 2400) calories and I thought that felt like death, I couldn't imagine at 1200 calories. Thank god I was born a male with a high metabolism.
    Just another reason we females sometimes think about strangling you in your sleep. ;)

    However I do understand. Thanking my parents for their tall genes, so I get more to eat! At a deficit of 500-600 calories, most days that still allows me to eat almost 2000 calories a day. Maintenance will be 2500-2600, dependent on if my activity level stays the same or increases. I like cake, pie and brownies too much to go back to being sedentary. Well and I actually like exercise this time around.

    I'm lucky in that regard, because I don't do and don't have to do cardio, not even when I am cutting. My cutting calories is enough for me to not starve all the time (except when I have to lose the last couple of pounds, that's when it becomes torture since I have to drop my calories below 2400). Still, anyone who does and succeed to lose their weight at a decent pace at 1200 calories deserves a few handclaps.
  • emilyhultin
    emilyhultin Posts: 38 Member
    BusyRaeNOTBusty wrote: »
    Is your profile picture current? Are you sure you need to lose 10 to 15 pounds?

    yeah it’s from this past winter
  • acorsaut89
    acorsaut89 Posts: 1,147 Member
    arbuckle57 wrote: »
    when you lift you make muscle mass so this will weigh more than fat, as your loosing fat your gaining muscle mass, thus the increase sometimes. Bet your shapes changed and thats what you will see. Fat gone, shaplier you. Maybe weighing more than you thought.

    Based on the OP's profile picture AND name I'm going to guess the OP is female. Females do not have the hormones needed to gain that kind of muscle in a short period of time - heck maybe never without purposefully trying to gain that much muscle. Women just don't have the testosterone to do it.

    Also, in the short time frame she gave - a month I think?? - almost no one would gain enough muscle to show that kind of change . . . it's a long, slow process.
  • acorsaut89
    acorsaut89 Posts: 1,147 Member
    LiftHeavyThings27105 wrote: »
    WholeFoods4Lyfe wrote: »
    arbuckle57 wrote: »
    when you lift you make muscle mass so this will weigh more than fat, as your loosing fat your gaining muscle mass, thus the increase sometimes. Bet your shapes changed and thats what you will see. Fat gone, shaplier you. Maybe weighing more than you thought.

    Muscle does not weigh more than fat. A pound of fat weighs exactly the same as a pound of muscle - 1 pound. Muscle is more dense and takes up less physical space than fat, so a person who weighs 150lbs with 20% body fat is going to look very different than a person who is 150lbs with 40% body fat.
    ur2zfhkjqv1l.jpg

    THANK YOU for saying the obvious....one pound is one pound. Man, I am 51 and was in high school in the early | mid 80's. Did math change in the meantime? :-) I was starting to think it had! And, I was really good in math....Trig/Pre-Calc as a Junior and Calc as a Senior. I was thinking that maybe I had forgotten the easy stuff, like addition and subtraction. But, in my job (which I have been doing for 21 years) I am REALLY GOOD at making sure that stupid is not an option (just my phrase....all of my colleagues LOVE to hear me say that) with "stupid" being defined - often, but not exclusively - as making sure that Steps 1 and 2 have not been overlooked and that that we actually start with Step 1 (and not Step 4 like all of my 20-something colleagues like to do).

    So, I am so glad to hear that one pound in apples and one pound in oranges are the same! See, sometimes it is absolutely possible to compare apples with oranges and come up with the same results! See how I did that? :-)

    When people say this, I know they mean volume . . . in that a pound of fat takes up more space than a pound of muscle but I always want to look at people and just say something like seriously? Weight is weight - volume is a totally different story . . . but weight is weight. Assuming you have the same volume of each, then yes you'll get less weight but it just makes me laugh.

    It's like the riddle: what weighs more - 100 pounds of feathers or 100 pounds of bricks?? lol
  • fiddletime
    fiddletime Posts: 1,868 Member
    OP. I thought you did look great in your photo so also wonder your height and weight. I’m 5’2”, 129#, 63 yo, and maintain at 1350. I need to be at 1200 to lose weight and have so little wiggle room that a little slip keeps me in maintenance rather than losing. I weigh my food and I think that I probably overestimate my calorie burn, even though I only eat half my exercise calories back.

    As I’ve decided to work on getting down to 121 where I was a few years ago, I’m eating back less of my exercise calories. You can play around with your numbers as it sounds like you aren’t losing but certainly could be. MFP tells me to eat 1200 calories to lose 0.5, 1 or 2 pounds a week. So I have no way to know what I’m supposed to lose except by tweaking things. I lose about a pound every 3 weeks on 1200 cal and eating half my exercise calories back.

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