Not loosing on 1200 calories

nattalierusten · November 2019

Not loosing on 1200 and am seriously tracking. I am 5 5 and 157 pounds. Is this normal ?

gallicinvasion · November 2019

Have you given it 4-6 weeks of tracking? You can’t identify a trend until you have enough data. Two or three weeks is not really enough time to see an average weight-loss trend

Also, Do you use a food scale?

lgfrie · November 2019

Something's not right. Your TDEE, at 5'5" and 157 lbs, depending on age, should be around 1750 if you're sedentary, and quite a bit more if you're active. You should be losing 1+ lbs per week on 1200 cals. There are only so many ways to explain it:

- You are eating more calories than you think, probably much closer to an average of 1750 than 1200
- You haven't been at it for 5-6 weeks yet and are getting weird initial scale data, which is not at all unusual
- You are taking off-days and/or cheat meals that are unwinding the calorie deficit earned during your carefully tracked intake. It's easy to do. Before I stopped taking off-plan meals and days, I was occasionally wiping out an entire week of dieting in an hour.

Bottom line, most likely you are eating more calories than you think.

spiriteagle99 · November 2019

Agreed. You are either eating more than you think or not burning as many calories with exercise. If you aren't losing, be really consistent in weighing everything that goes in your mouth. Double check the calories in the data base. There are errors and sometimes multiple listings for the same food can have very different calorie amounts. If a number doesn't have a green check, it may not be correct, or it may have changed. i.e. Swiss Miss cocoa used to be 90 calories two years ago. Last year it went up to 160. The most recent box said 190. Check everything. Same with the calories you burn exercising. If you are using the calories given by your treadmill, they may be completely off. Don't eat all the calories given until you are fairly sure of the accuracy.

kshama2001 · November 2019

There are mistakes that people commonly make that cause them to not lose weight that we might be able to spot if you change your Diary Sharing settings to Public: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

LivingtheLeanDream · November 2019

How long have you been tracking intake?

middlehaitch · November 2019

@nattalierusten, as said above, it is probably simple logging and food weighing errors. Opening your diary so you can get some guidance could be really helpful.

Because you don’t have a lot of weight to lose aiming for 1 lbs a week would be a good goal.

Don’t forget, if you exercise log and eat back the calories.

Cheers, h.

whitpauly · November 2019

Eating more than 1200 calories

shelleysykeskeene · November 2019

I've had similar issues - also 161cm tall and around 5.4 tall but I'm 190 lbs (around 88kg). I'm on 1200csl a day thinking I'd have faster weight loss and was only losing 0.3kg a week.

I know it's been said already but make sure you are weighing and logging accurately. I was so annoyed when people suggested this to me - of course I'm tracking /logging and measuring stuff! But I was using cups and spoons (from my baking set) instead of weighing things. For oats I was using a third of a cup measure which I was told is around 26g - out of curiosity weighed it and it was 58g! Pushed my calories up by almost 200! Also every thing you drink counts, every sauce and dressing counts, every bite, lick or taste counts, I didn't know you had to weigh certain veg and salad stuff (I was on weight watchers and most veg and salad stuff is 0 points which means you don't count those so I didn't realize they had a caloric value!)
I have also started using the Barcode option when you want to add a food - it gives you the accurate calorie value per portion - I was using whatever database item was similar and when using the Barcode instead I found some calories were much higher and some much lower than what I was logging.
Also make sure you are logging every single day - no slipping up on weekends!

With regards to exercise calories - MFP is notorious for over estimating calorie burn so try not to eat back those calories or only eat back a third of them.

How long have you been on 1200 Cal a day? It could be too soon to see a difference or you could have hit a plateau or you could be eating too few calories - try adding 50-100cal to your total daily for a week and see if it makes a difference. When I was on a 1400cal diet I was losing 1.2kg a week - now on 1200 I'm losing 0.3kg - weird I know! Also, If you start off eating low, you don't have room to lower those calories as you lose weight so you can continue to lose.

I hope some of this helps.

Spite70 · December 2019

You might have a hormonal issue.

I too am on 1200 cal/day and I have been actually gaining for the last two months. I was 125lb and now am 132 which is crazy - (I'd expect that weight gain from eating more like 2200 cal/day).

I lowered my calories to 1200 from 1400 two months ago and I wasn't seeing any difference for a few weeks until I started gaining, I gained about 4lbs and went to my doctor a little over a month in and had some tests and bloods done and apparently I have some hormonal issues. I continued on 1200 calories and 3lbs more but my body seems to finally be functioning more normally. It's annoying to see progress out the window despite doing everything that used to work for weight loss but I would really recommend seeing a doctor and having some tests done so that if there is something wrong, you can start working to fix it instead of waiting for it to fix itself for weeks.

snickerscharlie · December 2019

nattalierusten wrote: »

Not loosing on 1200 and am seriously tracking. I am 5 5 and 157 pounds. Is this normal ?

What does "seriously tracking" mean? If you're not actually weighing your food, you're really only "seriously guesstimating."

JRsLateInLifeMom · December 2019

Same here if I don’t exercise enough or carbs too high (peri menopausal so hormones hate me). I got to watch my calorie to a T the balance of macros ! If sedentary bam no loose ...move a lot get a few hours of exercise bam either measurements or weight slowly drops off. Lost 43 lbs so far but had to figure stuff out like yes was eating a salad ...but what dressing how much was I using serving size properly? So dressing change to checking amounts. I track it all but it’s not instant some months I plateau forever ♾ others I drop fast or regularly.

Peri menopause age to size started around 200 marker (195 by the time Dr suggested this app) he put me on 1200 but I’m tiny boned to hormones lots of other stuff can’t go by mine . Another Woman younger than me he put on a much much higher calorie diet y older Woman my age group wasn’t peri y taller she got way way way more than me too. Not fair I want more calories too! Lol oh well Doctors orders.When I started here had trouble so went back to Doctor to figure out if the calories it suggested was right or not to what I was doing wrong by showing y telling what I eat. Said Hidden Valley Ranch he said nothin hidden about that Valley . Lol 😂 so true was making more hills around me!

For me exercise does a lot! Calories being very cautious about but if I go over more exercise.

Not loosing on 1200 calories

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