Former fitness enthusiast

Carbs do not effect whether you lose weight or not. Your overall calories do. You don't give your stats, so don't know if 1200 cal a day is right for you. It is the lowest MFP will give a woman.

If you were more muscular than average a mere 10 years ago, you're probably still somewhat more muscular than average now, though maybe less dramatically so. Strength will come back relatively quickly, with patience, I'd predict.

As others have said, carb intake is irrelevant to weight loss, since calories are what matter directly. For your fitness/health goals, getting adequate protein (enough grams, not just percent of calories) and enough fats is important, but you can eat whatever level of carbs feels good to you within calorie budget, and it'll be fine. Besides, it's good to eat plenty of varied, colorful veggies and fruits for micronutrients and fiber, and those tend to have some carbs in them. Carbs are not the devil!

Carbs are needed to some extent for best strength-training and CV activity performance, also.

There's a lot of crazy stuff in the blogosphere demonizing carbs and misrepresenting what they do in the body. Unless a person has a relevant health condition (like diabetes among others), carbs aren't a big deal, unless you happen to be one of the people for whom they spike appetite. (I ate around 150g of them most days while losing, 200g+ now in maintenance. It was fine.)

I suppose I might be a "fitness enthusiast" in that I'm pretty active, but mostly I just think being active is more fun? I was active for a dozen years while overweight/obese, even training/competing; it took better managing the eating side of the equation for me to reach a healthy weight and stay there (for around 7 years now.)

How tall are you? I'm concerned if you're eating only 1200 calories, plus doing exercise on top of that.
That seems very low, especially if you're working out every day. With only 16 or so pounds to lose at 139 pounds, it would be a good choice to go for more like half a pound a week loss rate, and yeah, that will take a long-ish time to show up on the scale amongst normal daily water weight fluctuations, but it's more likely to preserve your health and energy level, not to mention better support any fitness goals you may have.

FWIW, I'd lose like a house afire on 1200 calories, or even 1200 plus exercise calories - much faster than would be healthy for me to do. I admit I'm a mysteriously good li'l ol' calorie burner, but I'm lighter than you are now, and 23 years older - also female, though. Having lost 50+ pounds in less than a year at age 59-60, I'm pretty sure that age alone wouldn't be holding back your weight loss.

I see that you've only been on MFP for a few days (since 11/15, looks like). If that's when you started your new routine, that's for sure not long enough to see results on the scale (or any other observable metric I can think of). Water fluctuations can hide fat loss for much longer than that, but the fat loss will show up in your weight trend over 4-6 weeks (comparing bodyweight at the same relative point in at least 2 different menstrual cycles, if you're still having those).

This absolutely can work, but it takes some patience, and a sustainable strategy. Wishing you much success!

saveirasingh wrote: »

Wow you are all amazing! Thanks so much for the advice!! Good thing on the carbs…I do eat a lot of vegetables but today I added in more fruit to help but felt quite full.
The 1200 cals the app suggested does factor in when I workout..it will update based on how many calories burned and add in lost cals. I feel like 1200 is working but good to hear most of you think that’s low as tonight I went over!
Thanks so much again for the support and intel.
Oh and fyi I’m 5’6.5 and I weight 138.
Thanks!

In one sense, MFP does suggest a calorie level . . . but you're the one in the driver's seat. You tell MFP how many pounds/kilos you want to lose per week, and it does the math to try to get you there. But it won't go below 1200 for a women, even if the person would have to eat fewer than 1200 (by the math) to lose as fast as they asked for. In one sense, getting 1200 is a hint that a woman has possibly asked for a too-aggressive weight loss rate for her situation, unless that woman is quite petite, older, inactive, etc. It can be a recipe for fatigue, sub-ideal nutrition, increased health risk, and more.

A TDEE calculator (not MFP) suggests that if you're average in calorie needs, and if you were sedentary (normal life, no intentional exercise), your daily needs would be around 1600. Since you have a history of bodybuilding - even though past at this time - you might well burn more calories than average. (I do. It's not super common to be far from average, but it happens. I'm 5'5", upper 120s pounds recently, maintain around 2000 or so before exercise, at age 67. That's unusual.)

On top of all of that, you're doing exercise (and I"m glad to hear you're eating those calories, too.

I'm assuming you asked for at least a pound a week loss rate, maybe faster? That's fast, with so little to lose. Half a pound a week would be more compatible with goals to improve fitness, gain strength, add muscle mass, in someone with so little weight to lose. (I know, it feels like a lot of weight to you, and you'd like to lose it fast. But you want to lose fat, right, not muscle or other useful tissue?)

Best wishes!