How to have energy on 1200 calories?

WinoGelato · March 2019

Ok I’m going to try one more time. You said you maintain at 1500 cals and that you use a food scale. Religiously? You weigh everything solid? Do you also eat back calories from exercise? If so that means the 1500 is your net maintenance, not your TDEE. What do you think your TDEE is? A You said nothing changes from when you were maintaining to when you were gaining other than the medication, ok that’s fine, but when you’ve done the 1200 cal diet as you called it, you just reduced your food intake by exactly 300 calories? Did you change the types of food you ate? You continued to weigh all your food intake? Continued to eat back exercise calories?

These questions are not meant to make you feel defensive but you asked for help and people are trying to understand the full picture so they can give you advice that will help you. And since you do seem fond of your doctor, maybe ask for a referral to a registered dietician if you want help designing a plan that you find satiating that will help you meet your weight loss and then maintenance goals.

PAV8888 · March 2019

I was about to say that it really doesn't matter how this weight gain came about; but, to a degree, this is an incorrect statement on my part.

The body can truly retain a huge amount of water and can absolutely look and BE larger as a result. *PM sent about extreme example effect of water retention.

And depending on your starting situation you may or may not have the underlying fat storage to see the weight loss you want if your weight gain is NOT caused by excess fat storage.

Depending on how long ago you stopped your medication and how it interacts with your body this water weight will release sooner or later; but, your diet and exercise are NOT going to make this happen faster or slower (**probably: it might be a worthwhile question to ask a doctor or the drug manufacturer if they have any knowledge of the mechanism involved and the time-frame during which water may be retained).

Again, if the weight gain was due to the drug directly and it went and bound more water into your cells, dieting will not get that water out of there!

So you do have to take a deep breath and think this through.

If your weight gain was NOT caused by excess calories it was caused by water retention. Going about trying to reduce your fat levels will do nothing to reduce that water retention!

It will of course make you thinner by reducing your fat levels. But if you were starting well into the normal range and you now apply a large deficit because you want to kick start this and see large results; but are actually applying these large deficits on a relatively fat free body, then you will run into the problems that lean people run into when they apply large deficits.

Most importantly that the ratio of fat to lean mass lost will not work out in your favour especially when you create a larger deficit.

peggy_polenta · March 2019

hi, to your original question. 1...eat a dill pickle or olive or something salty when you are feeling off/low energy. and/or maybe think about adding salt to all your meals. 2. you may want to try eating low carb (if you are not) to get into and stay in ketosis. once you get passed the flu stage, you will have tons of energy. i think you will have to stick to low carb (which will get you into ketosis) but eating keto may be difficult due your your low calorie allowance and how much fat you need to consume....you will hit 1200 real fast that way. 3. try eating one meal a day. it may take several days to get used to it, but once you are you may notice a change in your energy levels. 4. make sure you are getting enough water and not getting dehydrated. that can really sap you.

AnnPT77 · March 2019

Maxxitt wrote: »

Just taking your original question about having energy on 1200 calories, my experience is that I do better when those 1200 calories consist of at least 100 g of protein, at least 40 g of fat, and the rest carbohydrates consisting of whole fruits, vegetables of all types, and whole grains.

This. OP, I apologize if I missed it, but I even re-read & didn't see anywhere that you said anything about what you were eating to get the 1200 calories (macros, veggies/fruits for micros/fiber especially). Had your doctor done blood tests for thyroid, key nutrients, etc.?

Also, how is your sleep?

To answer part of your question: I got weak and fatigued on 1200 (not as severe as you report, but still unpleasant). For myself, though, I was able to increase calories and still lose weight. But I'm your height, mid-130s, age 63, eating all exercise calories, and maintain in the low 2000s net. In my case, the deficit at 1200 was simply too much for my then-weight (low 150s at the time - it was almost 4 years ago). Most of my weight loss was at 1400-1600 net calories.

katrina6823 · March 2019

karen8787 wrote: »

hi, to your original question. 1...eat a dill pickle or olive or something salty when you are feeling off/low energy. and/or maybe think about adding salt to all your meals. 2. you may want to try eating low carb (if you are not) to get into and stay in ketosis. once you get passed the flu stage, you will have tons of energy. i think you will have to stick to low carb (which will get you into ketosis) but eating keto may be difficult due your your low calorie allowance and how much fat you need to consume....you will hit 1200 real fast that way. 3. try eating one meal a day. it may take several days to get used to it, but once you are you may notice a change in your energy levels. 4. make sure you are getting enough water and not getting dehydrated. that can really sap you.

I personally wouldn't do keto if your already feeling like this. I am ending my keto stint after 10 weeks because how you feel now is how I feel on keto

kshama2001 · March 2019

@Amani800 your mentions of anxiety made me think of water retention due to increased cortisol - does any of this resonate with you?

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dietary-restraint-and-cortisol-levels-research-review.html/

...a group of women who scored higher on dietary restraint scores showed elevated baseline cortisol levels. By itself this might not be problematic, but as often as not, these types of dieters are drawn to extreme approaches to dieting.

They throw in a lot of intense exercise, try to cut calories very hard (and this often backfires if disinhibition is high; when these folks break they break) and cortisol levels go through the roof. That often causes cortisol mediated water retention (there are other mechanisms for this, mind you, leptin actually inhibits cortisol release and as it drops on a diet, cortisol levels go up further). Weight and fat loss appear to have stopped or at least slowed significantly. This is compounded even further in female dieters due to the vagaries of their menstrual cycle where water balance is changing enormously week to week anyhow.

And invariably, this type of psychology responds to the stall by going even harder. They attempt to cut calories harder, they start doing more activity. The cycle continues and gets worse. Harder dieting means more cortisol means more water retention means more dieting. Which backfires (other problems come in the long-term with this approach but you’ll have to wait for the book to read about that).

When what they should do is take a day or two off (even one day off from training, at least in men, lets cortisol drop significantly). Raise calories, especially from carbohydrates. This helps cortisol to drop. More than that they need to find a way to freaking chill out. Meditation, yoga, get a massage... Get in the bath, candles, a little Enya, a glass of wine, have some you-time but please just chill.

zeejane03 · March 2019

Amani800 wrote: »

magnusthenerd wrote: »

Amani800 wrote: »

aes1219 wrote: »

What medication caused this?

The medication is fluoxetine.

This person explains the complexity of weight gain/loss on SSRIs better than I can:

https://www.quora.com/Do-antidepressants-lead-to-weight-gain/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
https://www.quora.com/Will-tapering-off-SSRIs-cause-weight-loss/answer/Mark-Dunn-64

He doesn't explain it better because he explains nothing, he merely asserts.
I've been on Fluoxetine / Prozac, I've been on Escitalopram / Lexapro, I've been on Buproprion / Welbutrin - even for the last one that isn't an SSRI, this isn't how antidepressants work or interact. SSRI's are going to impact the reupatake of serotonin primarily in your brain, which has a pretty substantial blood-brain barrier that limits how much serotonin in the rest of your body will be impacted.
What an SSRI will do is alter your behavior around food. Generally, it can make food more rewarding by lowering the kind of anhedonia that depression brings where nothing seems rewarding. It can also alter self-regulating behavior by reducing anxiety, and for some people, anxiety is unfortunately one of the regulating mechanisms that keeps weight in check. It can also alter activity level, reducing figiting / unconscious movement. That isn't what would be generally called metabolism, but that can accumulate in burning less calories per day.

Just like you're asserting? I have spoken to many doctors that are in agreement with him. I've been on multiple SSRIs too. So what makes you an expert and not me? SSRIs are extremely complex and work in thousands of different ways for different people.

And like I have said NUMEROUS times, I track my diet and exercise religiously, even taking extra care when on meds as I know the potential effects. There was never any change in this. And I never experienced an increase in appetite. How about you respect my individual experience? But no, you a stranger on the internet knows more about what I've been living with every day.

Losing control of my body as a result of medication has been a huge, heartbreaking battle for me - especially hard as I make such an effort with diet and exercise. Only for it to be in vain as soon as I went on meds, the scales mocking my efforts. So I don't appreciate strangers on the internet telling me that everything I'm saying about my personal experience is false. Again, my experiences are corroborated by my doctors. And I trust them on their opinions on how medicine works over some strangers on the internet with no medical qualifications and who have never met me.

If you do not want the input of strangers on the internet then maybe you shouldn't post on a public forum asking for input, from strangers on the internet.

Daveybaseball · March 2019

A common mistake I hear people doing on here and talking about is eating back calories. If you eat back your calories then u wouldn’t really be loosing weight at all as you would just be eating back the calories you burned. If you want to maintain weight then u should eat back calories you burned. If you want to actually loose weight then the calories u burn and the extra calories the app gives you should not be eaten back. Think about weight loss in terms of calories in versus calories out. You want to eat just enough, but not to much and overeat so that you’re body can burn off calories etc. My friend went to school and studied exercise and stuff and is a personal trainer and he told me this stuff. Also your level of activity will factor in to how many calories you can eat in a day and still loose weight. For example, if you work out 3 or 4 times a week you are going yo be able to eat slighty more if you worked out 0-1 times a week. Thinking about it all like this has helped me so far and maybe it could help some of you as well!

shadow2soul · March 2019

Daveybaseball wrote: »

A common mistake I hear people doing on here and talking about is eating back calories. If you eat back your cories then u wouldn’t really be loosing weight at all as you would just be eating back the calories you burned. If you want to maintain weight then u should eat back calories you burned. If you want to actually loose weight then the calories u burn and the extra calories the app gives you should not be eaten back. Think about weight loss in terms of calories in versus calories out. You want to eat just enough, but not to much and overeat so that you’re body can burn off calories etc. My friend went to school and studied exercise and stuff and is a personal trainer and he told me this stuff. Also your level of activity will factor in to how many calories you can eat in a day and still loose weight. For example, if you work out 3 or 4 times a week you are going yo be able to eat slighty more if you worked out 0-1 times a week. Thinking about it all like this has helped me so far and maybe it could help some of you as well!

:noway:

This site is designed for you to eat exercise calories. The math for your intake is done in a way that gives you a calorie goal that is appropriate if you don’t workout. If you do workout and don’t compensate for that you increase your deficit further which can lead to binge/restrict cycles and can be harmful to your body if done long enough.

If you use a TDEE calculator, than you don’t eat exercise calories because they are already accounted for in your calorie goal. These calculators will give you a higher calorie goal than MFP for this reason.

I ate all my exercise calories/adjustments and lost over 100lbs doing so. It’s not wrong or a mistake to eat them. It’s important to understand what type of calculation you are using. MFP uses NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) which is what you burn without exercise and bases the deficit off of that. That’s why I was able to lose weight while also eating my exercise calories.

RunnerGrl1982 · March 2019

Daveybaseball wrote: »

A common mistake I hear people doing on here and talking about is eating back calories. If you eat back your calories then u wouldn’t really be loosing weight at all as you would just be eating back the calories you burned. If you want to maintain weight then u should eat back calories you burned. If you want to actually loose weight then the calories u burn and the extra calories the app gives you should not be eaten back. Think about weight loss in terms of calories in versus calories out. You want to eat just enough, but not to much and overeat so that you’re body can burn off calories etc. My friend went to school and studied exercise and stuff and is a personal trainer and he told me this stuff. Also your level of activity will factor in to how many calories you can eat in a day and still loose weight. For example, if you work out 3 or 4 times a week you are going yo be able to eat slighty more if you worked out 0-1 times a week. Thinking about it all like this has helped me so far and maybe it could help some of you as well!

To clarify, when discussing "eating back calories" - we are talking about exercise calories. MFP was designed to provide you a deficit prior to any exercise; therefore the calories you've expended during exercise need to be replaced in order to keep you properly fueled. Sometimes, that comes in the amount of eating all those exercise calories back, and other times perhaps 50 - 75%. It varies per person, accuracy, etc...

To not eat back exercise calories could potentially lead someone to severely under-eating depending on their stats.

estherdragonbat · March 2019

Daveybaseball wrote: »

A common mistake I hear people doing on here and talking about is eating back calories. If you eat back your calories then u wouldn’t really be loosing weight at all as you would just be eating back the calories you burned. If you want to maintain weight then u should eat back calories you burned. If you want to actually loose weight then the calories u burn and the extra calories the app gives you should not be eaten back. Think about weight loss in terms of calories in versus calories out. You want to eat just enough, but not to much and overeat so that you’re body can burn off calories etc. My friend went to school and studied exercise and stuff and is a personal trainer and he told me this stuff. Also your level of activity will factor in to how many calories you can eat in a day and still loose weight. For example, if you work out 3 or 4 times a week you are going yo be able to eat slighty more if you worked out 0-1 times a week. Thinking about it all like this has helped me so far and maybe it could help some of you as well!

Tell that to the 108lbs I lost eating back calories.

PAV8888 · March 2019

A common mistake people make is not understanding how the tools that they use work...

pinuplove · March 2019

How to have energy at 1200? I don't. Full stop. I'd rather take a year to lose the last 10 pounds than try to survive on that.

You've gotten a lot of good (and some bad) advice from this thread. Hopefully you can take it as it's intended, voices of experience with your well-being in mind.

kshama2001 · March 2019

Daveybaseball wrote: »

A common mistake I hear people doing on here and talking about is eating back calories. If you eat back your calories then u wouldn’t really be loosing weight at all as you would just be eating back the calories you burned. If you want to maintain weight then u should eat back calories you burned. If you want to actually loose weight then the calories u burn and the extra calories the app gives you should not be eaten back. Think about weight loss in terms of calories in versus calories out. You want to eat just enough, but not to much and overeat so that you’re body can burn off calories etc. My friend went to school and studied exercise and stuff and is a personal trainer and he told me this stuff. Also your level of activity will factor in to how many calories you can eat in a day and still loose weight. For example, if you work out 3 or 4 times a week you are going yo be able to eat slighty more if you worked out 0-1 times a week. Thinking about it all like this has helped me so far and maybe it could help some of you as well!

If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.

Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others, however, are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1

AnnPT77 · March 2019

Daveybaseball wrote: »

A common mistake I hear people doing on here and talking about is eating back calories. If you eat back your calories then u wouldn’t really be loosing weight at all as you would just be eating back the calories you burned. If you want to maintain weight then u should eat back calories you burned. If you want to actually loose weight then the calories u burn and the extra calories the app gives you should not be eaten back. Think about weight loss in terms of calories in versus calories out. You want to eat just enough, but not to much and overeat so that you’re body can burn off calories etc. My friend went to school and studied exercise and stuff and is a personal trainer and he told me this stuff. Also your level of activity will factor in to how many calories you can eat in a day and still loose weight. For example, if you work out 3 or 4 times a week you are going yo be able to eat slighty more if you worked out 0-1 times a week. Thinking about it all like this has helped me so far and maybe it could help some of you as well!

OK, so you shouldn't eat back your exercise calories or you won't lose weight; but you get to eat more if you exercise more vs. if you don't, and you'll still lose weight.

Got it. <eye roll>

Others have explained the difference between the MFP NEAT method of calorie counting, and the TDEE method of calorie counting, both of which involve eating back exercise calories, but in different ways. I won't bother repeating.

How to have energy on 1200 calories?

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