Any 1200 calorie petite girls?

claireychn074 wrote: »

I think I’m “reasonably” petite: 5’3.5, but I strength train. I weigh c122 pounds with c20% body fat. I maintain on 2100 -2200 cals and will lose weight (slowly) on 1900 cals. Everyone is different so my stats might not work for others, but petite girls don’t always have to stick to 1200 cals per day. It depends on your activity (I’m sedentary at a computer all day but do 10 hrs weight training per week and walk the dog for 45 mins each day) and how fast you decide to lose weight. For a lot of petite women, picking a slower rate of loss will be more sustainable as it gives you enough calories to get the right nutrients in and have enough energy to be active (too few cals usually leads to unconscious reduced activity).

So yes it can be done but we are all different!

Can I ask, is your 2100 maintenance with or without exercise?

With my normal pandemic-era exercise (75 minute ballet class, 30-60 minutes of walking, and 25 minutes of stretching 6 days per week) I can eat about 1600-1700 to lose 1 pound per week, but even that often doesn't feel like enough food for the day. Might be mostly psychological factors but I've been hitting a wall for the last couple months and just not able to stick to my goal on most days, so I'm considering resigning myself to a slower rate of loss. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

I'm 5' 2...57...147lb trying to figure this out.

Daily Calorie Budget - 1200
BMR = 1,205 Calories/day

Daily calorie needs based on activity level 1,765
BMI Score: 26.9 kg/m2 (Overweight), Healthy BMI Range: 18.5 - 25 kg/m2
The estimated TDEE or body weight maintenance energy requirement is 2,009 Calories per day.

Weight loss
1 lb/week
1,509 75%
Calories/day

Goal 105 by July

I'm 5' 2...57...147lb trying to figure this out.

Daily Calorie Budget - 1200
BMR = 1,205 Calories/day

Daily calorie needs based on activity level 1,765
BMI Score: 26.9 kg/m2 (Overweight),
The estimated TDEE or bodyweight Weight loss energy requirement is 1 lb/week 1,509 75% Calories per day.


Goal 105 by July

Walking 3-5miles at least 5 days but want to test 3m daily on 1200. I use a 100c burn per mile since I can't find a surefire calculator.

Drink: 60-80oz water or unsweetenee tea

Introducing smoothies

Smaller portions

Almond milk, mixed fruit, slimfast, ice is what I'm introducing as a lunch type meal.

Also IF 8:16, my biggest meal first, most cals.

My daily routine I can easily live with:

Glass of water first thing, with 2 gummies multivitamins

Walk 2.5 miles

First meal is the biggest, highest cals. Instead of breakfast, lunch, dinner, I go with OMAD ...one big meal

Use those cals through the day

If I'm hungry, either high protein light lunch or smoothie

Last Chance Before Fast light snack meal, sandwich, soup, etc.

I updated my daily cals to 1450-1500 as that seemed to be a decent deficit average

Fast 16 begins, walk 2.5 miles

Drink water all day


This is generally keeping with my typical day to day but now with attention to portion size and cutting between meal snacks. Instead, it's doing healthy snackin for either of the last two.

My problem was loading up a plate. If I make anything larger then it'll be light snack or next day's big meal.

I think that will drop 1-2lbs a week.

Maybe when the plateau hits I'll do a fast food meal and soft drink...then add more miles for those calories.

Personal experience from Feb to Mar took me from 150 to 146...the two main things that I changed was cutting soft drinks for water only, cutting fast food completely.

Keeping to that is fine for me, I'm not ever having fast food withdrawals or all that. If I grab a soft drink it's one 20oz a week or a 1ltr that I just grab a few sips to indulge the urge the put it back in the fridge. That helped cut out pouring the glass full with meals or daily 20ozs. Plus going to the fridge for a sip is more inconvenient than just drinking water that's always with me.

I wasn't addicted to soft drinks...it was mostly just habitual over the course of my life, it's like we're "supposed to" drink soft drinks as normal...so I'd drink a couple 20ozs a day with meals...but then I realized it'd gone up to a 2ltr a day. Once I actually caught that I was doing it, and replaced it with a water only, I just stopped and that weight dropped quickly in a couple weeks.

Then I went to Captain Ds and Panda Express last week, and had a 20oz a day and it went back to 148. So I'm pretty sure that was the main culprit. Once I cut it out and weighed properly it put me at 147 after 4 days...leading to Sunday or Monday when I decided to try this app.

I'll make my adjustments but I don't eat extremely unhealthy anyway. I was eating bigger portions or having seconds (sometimes I cook some good stuff and it's just...gotta get more!) and overdoing it on the sodas with all the sugar but I'm working out a course of action I can live with comfortably that's sustainable.

I can comfortably live without soda but it's nice on occasion. I will make an exception if I have anything super spicy. The soda helps curb that for me. Otherwise water is fine. Unsweetened tea had been working also. My favorite blend is Community Porch Breeze. It's a nice flavor, not bitter at all and I found it's pleasant enough I can just dump in the hot water, then add the ice (I'm a southern girl, we do iced tea) and drink it like water anyway.

I don't do milk and cheese in and of itself. I detest yogurts, cream cheese, sour cream, any cream...it grosses me out. Like aversion level nope. If it's mixed into something it's fine, like a dollop of milk in the scrambled eggs or cornbread...but a glass of milk makes me cringe. I might do ice cream a couple times throughout the year. Just not into it.

I do steak, chicken, tuna, italian sausage, breakfast pork chops, onion, bells, banana peppers, sweet peppers, cucumbers, asparagus, hominy, veggies, etc. I don't need the fancy prep meals. I often make 2-3 small/med chopped potatoes, onions, bells and asparagus as a full plated meal. Chicken strips, BBQ sauce, onions and banana peppers slow cooked all day and then a sandwich here and there til it's gone over several meals. That sort of thing. I use a little olive oil for the veggies. I've not touched bacon in a year. I did bacon because you're supposed to eat it with eggs...but I found I could live without it, and for scrambled eggs which I don't do regularly anyway (not a huge egg person either), it's with sausage or I throw in some veggies and eat it over toast, so I don't need the bacon.

My typical habit was one big meal and 2 lighter snack size meals...but I was eating a big bowl of chips and salsa or a big bowl of popcorn or a package of lifesaver gummies a day 4 days in a row.

And it was the sodas and sedentary that piled this on, topped off with 2x weekly fast food. Once I cut that off I actually witnessed a 4lb drop the following week.

I bought 1 pack of gummies and rationed them out through the week. It was fine. Not a life altering sacrifice. Instead of big bowls I learned to grab a big old 5' 2 petite girl handful size of chips and put them on a napkin with a couple tablespoons of whatever dip, if any, and I have discovered my new favorite popcorn that is "ehh" but it's not leaving my diet. I will make room for it for movie nights every Sunday... Jolly Time blast o butter mini packs. OMG that's so good, just the right amount of butter/salt flavor. That movie time and OR is so rich and gross with a nasty aftertaste. Jolly Time is legitimately good stuff.

I did that without the MFP app. I am not nitpicking calories, I'm not likely to measure anything for portions and all that. That's too OCD anal-retentive for me but I will be more conscious of what amounts I am eating and I will definitely use a smaller plate. If that plan drops it down for next week's weigh in then we're good to go.

If it still doesn't happen then I'll surrender to the scale and weigh it out and try it that way in the end...but I saw results dropping the garbage food from my diet. I think that, plus smaller portions and the OMAD/IF and 5m a day will drop this off.

Now it's 12:30...I'm on my first glass of water and will get my 2.5 miles in before I eat. I'm just now feeling hungry so by the time the walking's done I'll know what I feel like eating and go make it. That'll likely do me til about 4 or 5. My cut off is 8 hours from whenever I actually eat the first meal. That's way easier to manage than trying to force myself to eat at noon every day. I may be busy.

Hopefully that helps clarify what my goals and plans are.

As for the well intended "don't lose weight fast it's not healthy" suggestions, obviously yes...but if I knew how to drop weight fast, healthy or not I'd have done it already. Whatever I am doing is healthy enough because I'm not feeling bad, not worse but better, and I feel like I know my body best.

Like I said, this is a weight loss road trip for me, not a journey.

The journey was what got me here. I want this journey to end now.

It was the unhealthy over eating that got me here to begin with and it didn't kill me. I think a few months of cutting out the garbage food isn't at all unhealthy.

I mean, I smoked since I was 12. Stopped in 2013. Then vaped up until last year. I ate all kinds of fast food and downed sodas like it was water...THAT is unhealthy.

So dropping 2lbs a week while eating well, just smaller, and exercising...sorry, that's far, far less unhealthy than what I was doing so I'm going to stick with that until my body says not to.

I listen to my body. Sometimes it has to yell for me to just deal with it but I do listen.

This puzzles me. I'm 51, 5'4 and, OK, my bmi is 25 but maintenance calories are 1800 at lightly active for me - currently working on losing half a pound a week and it's a rare day that I'm constrained to just 1530kcal.

I can understand much shorter women struggling a little with mfp's 1200 limit but for women around my height it surely shouldn't be too difficult unless you're already at the lower end of a healthy bmi - at which point, if you're healthy, you should be looking to exercise more than a restrictive diet if you want to make your shape more aesthetically pleasing.

I am 5"1' and 51. I weighed 170lbs at the start of December 2020. I dieted on around 1600 going down to 1400 calories for 10 weeks and lost 10lbs. I then did a diet break/reverse diet for 5 weeks and brought my calories up to 2100. My weight stayed constant for the first 3 weeks then went up to 161.5lbs. I had intended to bring my calories up a bit higher but I didn't like seeing the increase on the scales, especially since I still have a lot of weight to lose.

This week is the 2nd week of my new diet and I am 160lbs again and averaging 2000 calories a day. I intend to stay at this amount of calories for another 4 weeks then I will have a 2 week break at 2200-2300 calories.

I got the inspiration to do this after finding out that other short women have slowly increased their calories and been able to lose weight at a more comfortable calorie intake.

I am 69 and 5.3 and weighed 167. Eating 1200 to 1400 per day. Moderste exercise. I have been stuck at 167 give or take for a year. I just switched to paleo and in 2 days i lost 2 pounds. 165 now. I hope its a sign of change.

Bella_Figura wrote: »

This is an interesting thread...I'm glad @zilipah revived it.

First off, @zilipah you look amazing! I can't believe you still have 10lbs to go.

My experience seems slightly different from the rest of you.

I will be considered petite once I reach my goal weight of 57 kg (BMI 23.7)

Height: 155cm (just under 5'1")
Age: 56
Current weight: 84kg (BMI 35.0)

My BMR is currently 1,373 and my TDEE is 2,293 (167% of BMR). I've been eating a calorie restricted diet (averages 1,400 cals/day) for the past 12 weeks. In that time I've lost 12kg (average of 2.2lbs per week).

According to the scooby calculator, I need to be doing '5-6 hours/week of strenuous cardio' to achieve this TDEE. In reality, I walk the dog at a 3.2mph pace for 90 minutes a day, and I potter in the garden for a couple of hours a week (a bit of weeding here, the odd spot of digging there. Nothing major). Maybe once a week I'll go for a 30 minute cycle ride at a slow 12mph pace.

So sometimes the calculators can get it wrong.

If (it's a big 'if') my TDEE remains at 167% of BMR, once I reach goal my BMR should be around 1,100 and my maintenance TDEE should be around 1,837.

If my calorie burn from NEAT/EAT drops sharply (say, by 50%) to lower my TDEE to 133% of BMR, I should be able to maintain on 1,463 calories/day. That's roughly what I'm eating at the moment, and I consider that sufficient calories for me to sustain long term.

Though, of course, I'd prefer to maintain on 1,837 than 1,463.

I can't understand why you much younger women have such a low TDEE - are you very sedentary? If so, could you consider ways to increase your calorie burn from NEAT/EAT so that you can allow yourselves a higher calorie budget?

Trust me, we wish for a higher TDEE! I maintain at around 1450 with about 8,000 steps a day. I used to be able to get 12,000-15,000 steps on a few days from doing long hikes and things but I have a back injury now and can’t do that. On those days, I would maintain around 1750 but that amount of activity wasn’t realistic for me on a daily basis.

When I had COVID and was quarantined at home I was more sedentary although still busy at home doing chores and things and maintained at around 1250. I’m 38, 5’0” and those stats are when I was 140 lbs. I’m pregnant now so not eating in a deficit. I have no thyroid condition or any health issues. My body is just efficient at maintaining on a low amount. That’s why it has been hard to lose the weight. I was typically hungry all the time even at maintenance and never had the calories in a day to ever indulge in what I really wanted.

I'm at 1200 calories too, not eating exercise calories. At first, it was a bit challenging, but now that I've figured out what works for me, it sometimes feels like an awful lot of food! ♡♡♡ Finding more bang for the buck foods!

Thank you @Bella_Figura I’m new year and still trying to figure this community part out.

Hello. I'm 58 YO. I'm 5'1" I'm not worried about going below 1200 cal per day for short term. I know I can increase calories once I get to my goal and want to maintain. I cut out all junk food. I eat healthy fat (nuts & seeds), low fat/non fat dairy and veggies. I am slowly losing but at least it is steady.

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