1200 calorie allotment

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karen_hunter11
karen_hunter11 Posts: 20 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hello, I've been reading a few different post and articles in these forms on this site trying to understand the losing weight process since I'm having such a hard time. I just read the "1200 Cal Exercise Food Help" forum and got so confused. Per MFP my daily calorie allotment is 1200. I'm 5 4" 189 lbs 56 yr old sedentary female. Reading the information in the above forum it basically mentioned the only person that should be eating such low calories are women that are 5 4" and around 110 lbs. While doing the math from that read my daily calorie allotment should be somewhere between 1815 -2720 to lose weight which is way higher than MFP's recommended 1200 a day. I did lose weight the first two weeks doing the 1200 cal allotment but then I gained 1 lb but I realized I had a few days that I ate under 800 calories so I spent two days making sure I ate at least 1200 and once again I was up on the scale by 1/2 pound. So I'm just really confused what's the accurate amount of calories I should being eating in order to have consistent weight lost of at least 1-2 lbs a week in order to lose 30 lbs. Any thoughts or ideas on this is much appreciated.
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Replies

  • Panini911
    Panini911 Posts: 2,325 Member
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    Are you weighting all foods and ensuring to use appropriate diary entries?

    you will have daily fluctuations in weight. heck in a singal day you can fluctuate 1-5 pds. don't let those stress you. pick a time of day and wear clothes weighin about the same (or none) and weight yourself around that same time daily. Note the weight and don't worry about small increase and decrease but rather look at the overall trend over 1-2 week. (and then more).
  • karen_hunter11
    karen_hunter11 Posts: 20 Member
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    Thank you Panini911, yes I do all the things you mentioned above. My question in my post is more about the confusion of how many calories I'm really supposed to be consuming because if I'm doing that part wrong that will be a good reason why I'm having issues.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,982 Member
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    karen_hunter11 wrote: »
    Hello, I've been reading a few different post and articles in these forms on this site trying to understand the losing weight process since I'm having such a hard time. I just read the "1200 Cal Exercise Food Help" forum and got so confused. Per MFP my daily calorie allotment is 1200. I'm 5 4" 189 lbs 56 yr old sedentary female. Reading the information in the above forum it basically mentioned the only person that should be eating such low calories are women that are 5 4" and around 110 lbs. While doing the math from that read my daily calorie allotment should be somewhere between 1815 -2720 to lose weight which is way higher than MFP's recommended 1200 a day. I did lose weight the first two weeks doing the 1200 cal allotment but then I gained 1 lb but I realized I had a few days that I ate under 800 calories so I spent two days making sure I ate at least 1200 and once again I was up on the scale by 1/2 pound. So I'm just really confused what's the accurate amount of calories I should being eating in order to have consistent weight lost of at least 1-2 lbs a week in order to lose 30 lbs. Any thoughts or ideas on this is much appreciated.

    With only 30 pounds to lose your weekly weight loss goal should be a pound a week or less, not 1-2 lbs a week.

    Keep it simple and use MFP to get your calories. MFP uses the NEAT formula, which does not factor in exercise in the base calories. You log exercise separately. Other tools use TDEE, and this will give you higher daily calories.

    Expect weight loss to be up and down like this:

    1nwu2qnc71cu.png
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
    edited September 2018
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    karen_hunter11 wrote: »
    Hello, I've been reading a few different post and articles in these forms on this site trying to understand the losing weight process since I'm having such a hard time. I just read the "1200 Cal Exercise Food Help" forum and got so confused. Per MFP my daily calorie allotment is 1200. I'm 5 4" 189 lbs 56 yr old sedentary female. Reading the information in the above forum it basically mentioned the only person that should be eating such low calories are women that are 5 4" and around 110 lbs. While doing the math from that read my daily calorie allotment should be somewhere between 1815 -2720 to lose weight which is way higher than MFP's recommended 1200 a day. I did lose weight the first two weeks doing the 1200 cal allotment but then I gained 1 lb but I realized I had a few days that I ate under 800 calories so I spent two days making sure I ate at least 1200 and once again I was up on the scale by 1/2 pound. So I'm just really confused what's the accurate amount of calories I should being eating in order to have consistent weight lost of at least 1-2 lbs a week in order to lose 30 lbs. Any thoughts or ideas on this is much appreciated.

    With 30 lbs to lose, your goal shouldn't be more than 1 lb per week, more simply isn't realistic.

    Also, MFP does not include exercise in your calorie goal, it expects you to log your exercise and eat back at least some of those calories.

    Weight loss isn't linear, it's perfectly normal to gain weight from one day to the next or one week to the next sometimes, usually due to water weight. You are looking for the trend over time, not one day to the next.

    All any calculator can do is give you a generalized starting point. You need to start somewhere, log accurately and consistently for at least 4-6 weeks, and then start to tweak if necessary based on your results.

    As far as that 1815-2700 range, I am 5'4 125lbs and I maintain my weight at 1800 cals. I know full grown men who would gain weight at 2700 calories. That range is way too large to draw any conclusions from, and seems high to me regardless.
  • Panini911
    Panini911 Posts: 2,325 Member
    edited September 2018
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    karen_hunter11 wrote: »
    Thank you Panini911, yes I do all the things you mentioned above. My question in my post is more about the confusion of how many calories I'm really supposed to be consuming because if I'm doing that part wrong that will be a good reason why I'm having issues.

    enter stats in MFP, select like 1pound/week loss and use that. remembering that if you exercise you are meant to eat those back.

    Then try that for 2 weeks and see where things are at. If you are loosing too fast add some cals. If you are not loosing 1 pound per week, double check your logging, ensure you are not over estimated exercise cals. If you are eating above 1200 you can skim it down a bit but don't go under 1200.

    at 5'1, 139pds and walking a lot (as I can't run these last few weeks) I lose at 1350-1400 cals a day.
  • judinotjodi
    judinotjodi Posts: 4 Member
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    hi karen_hunter11,
    first of all let me tell you this is the first time i've ever commented or even looked up community posts. I just opened MFP on my laptop and decided to look at the forums. Your post caught my eye because I am 5'4'' 185 lbs and a 54 year old female. I lost approx 25 lbs last year using MFP food log. My calorie allotment was 1200 cal. With 1200 calories I lost on average 1-2 lbs per week. Of course not every week I stuck to my 1200 calories but it really made me accountable and it is a great tool to use because you can see every calorie you've consumed (that is if you write down all of the food you ate). I believe a 1200 calorie limit is the right amount. Even eating 1200 calories a day the body fluctuates and in my experience if I really stuck to the calorie limit and didn't lose weight that week, the next week or two it eventually came off . As most people know (and we've all been told), its hard for women our age to lose weight but logging it really showed me that it is possible. Eating 1200 calories/day and eating a little more now and then, I averaged approx 1 pound/week.
  • orientalfreak04
    orientalfreak04 Posts: 1 Member
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    What happen if you can not eat 1200 calories? There are times when I’m a little over or way under . It’s really hard to just hit her 1200 on the dot
  • nowine4me
    nowine4me Posts: 3,985 Member
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    If MFP is the tool you have committed to, plug in your stats and do as it says. Eat back exercise. Other tools use other methods, it’s hard to mix and match until you are super dialed in
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
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    orientalfreak04 wrote: »
    What happen if you can not eat 1200 calories? There are times when I’m a little over or way under . It’s really hard to just hit her 1200 on the dot

    Try to average at least 1200 calories (net) over time. There are people who eat less during the week to make room for a restaurant meal, or dessert, or whatever on weekends.

    1200 calories (before exercise) is a default minimum. Most women can lose weight while eating more. Why would someone want slower weight loss? Slower weight loss helps your body support existing lean muscle mass. Lowering your body fat % (not just the number on the scale) is healthy weight loss.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,584 Member
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    orientalfreak04 wrote: »
    What happen if you can not eat 1200 calories? There are times when I’m a little over or way under . It’s really hard to just hit her 1200 on the dot

    Nothing important happens if you're a little off your goal every day, or way off your goal on very rare occasions (regardless of whether these a off upwards, or off downwards).

    If you persistently or frequently under-eat by a good bit - even if you hit your goal spot on, but the goal is too aggressive - that's an unhealthy thing to do. First, you'll feel a little draggy, then weak, then exhausted, and you may experience hair loss, sallow complexion, brittle fingernails, and loss of muscle alongside fat loss. You could even have various health problems happen. Because of fatigue, your daily-life calorie burn would decrease, and your weight loss would slow (not stop, as long as a calorie deficit remains, but slow down to slower than you expect). Under-eating is a very bad plan.

    If you persistently eat above your goal, but you still eat below the calories it would take to maintain your current weight, you'll still lose weight, but more slowly than your goal calories would have you losing.

    If you eat above the calories it would take to maintain your current weight, you'll gain weight.

    Being a little up or down every day (50 calories or so) is perfectly fine and normal. You can look at your weekly total, and as long as you average your goal calories, you'll be fine.

    Don't sweat about being exact. :)
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,584 Member
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    judinotjodi wrote: »
    I think we just need to stop listening to this (bold part), stop believing it, and stop repeating it because it is false. Women of ANY age CAN and DO lose weight. This is what we need to hear and believe. Yes, I thought this once too, that it was impossible for my body to lose weight and I was too old to make changes at age 59. Once I found the right situation for me (a trainer near home, daily walks, and logging on MFP) I began losing weight and lost every month for 2.5 years, 150 total loss. I am 5'6" and ate around 1700 most of the time. Eventually I just evened out near the high end of my target range and then I called maintenance. Yes, some weeks were up and some down. I weighed daily and tracked in Happy Scale so I could learn my fluctuations and track my trend. I've maintained for 2 years and am in the best fitness shape of my life.

    Harder to lose weight after a certain age is NOT false. Its medically proven. And i never said it was impossible. In fact that was my exact point that by logging and tracking it is the best way to see what we eat ever day. So many women say its more difficult than when we were younger. You can say don't repeat it, don't believe it but I want to know the real facts. It was helpful to me to understand why I lost weight twice as fast when I was younger. And how losing 1 pound a week last year added up to significant weight loss with dieting and logging in to MFP.

    It's not a universal. Many women say they lose slower. Some don't. TDEE calculators estimate lower TDEE with age . . . but not much lower (it's on the order of 5 daily calories difference per year of age, at my size; it adds up, but it's still a small fraction of overall calories). There's also scientific research suggesting most of the reason for that calorie decline is reduced daily life activity, and reduced muscle mass, both of which we can influence.

    It's important to be realistic, sure . . . but it's also unhelpful to foster a "so hard when old" mindset. Most of my real-life friends have just given up on it, and are sicker, less independent, less able to do fun things, taking more meds, getting sick more often, requiring more surgeries (and recovering from them more slowly) as a consequence.

    You absolutely should tell the truth as you see it. But your experience isn't universal.

    For the record, I'm 62, and going into year 3 of maintenance after losing around 50 pounds.
  • judinotjodi
    judinotjodi Posts: 4 Member
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    I copy and pasted lorrpb but it didnt highlight her comment. Could you tell me how to comment and get another post highlighted. thanks
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,584 Member
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    judinotjodi wrote: »
    I copy and pasted lorrpb but it didnt highlight her comment. Could you tell me how to comment and get another post highlighted. thanks

    Before you type your response, click on "quote" below the post you want to quote, and wait for it to get copied into the reply box (it will have quote tags around it - a q in square brackets, then a /q in square brackets. You can also put those in by typing them).
  • judinotjodi
    judinotjodi Posts: 4 Member
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    [
    judinotjodi wrote: »
    I copy and pasted lorrpb but it didnt highlight her comment. Could you tell me how to comment and get another post highlighted. thanks

    oh i figured it out :)
  • karen_hunter11
    karen_hunter11 Posts: 20 Member
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    Judinotjodi, thank you. I guess I will just keep sticking to the 1200 calories MFP recommended. And hes it has been much more difficult for me to lose weight at this age versus 10-20 yrs ago, have to much much harder.
    Thank you all for your feedback. I'm still a bit confused on what the right amount of calories I should be eating per my original post but I will just keep trying with the 1200 daily calories. I appreciate all your feedback and ideas!
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
    edited September 2018
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    karen_hunter11 wrote: »
    Judinotjodi, thank you. I guess I will just keep sticking to the 1200 calories MFP recommended. And hes it has been much more difficult for me to lose weight at this age versus 10-20 yrs ago, have to much much harder.
    Thank you all for your feedback. I'm still a bit confused on what the right amount of calories I should be eating per my original post but I will just keep trying with the 1200 daily calories. I appreciate all your feedback and ideas!

    MFP didn't recommend 1200 calories, it spit out a goal based on the info you entered. If you chose an aggressive weekly goal, you will get an aggressive calorie goal.

    Are you exercising at all? Are you logging your exercise?

    Regardless, log accurately and consistently for at least 4-6 weeks, don't get hung up on daily fluctuations, and if at that point you are losing faster than 1 lb per week, increase your calorie goal. If you are struggling to stick to 1200 cals, change to 0.5lbs per week. Losing slowly and eventually hitting your goal is better than losing quickly but crashing and burning and possibly gaining it all back.

    Read the Most Helpful Posts thread pinned to the top of each forum too, lots of helpful info there.
  • mmnv79
    mmnv79 Posts: 538 Member
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    I'm no expert or whatever, but if it helps, I too got that I have to eat 1200 calories a day. I'm 5 4" too and currently down to 180 lbs (started with 205 lbs). I have a sedentary life, desk job, long hours,... getting to be more active now. I'm eating around 1300-1400 calories and I'm loosing weight. Not consistently, but I'm getting there. Once I start exercising more, I will increase my calories a bit. Feel free to add me to see my diary, etc.

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