How do you stay within your calorie goal while meeting your daily nutrient goal?

eat whatever you like. But chose a slower weightloss goal as whatever you've chosen won't happen anyway. If a female is given 1200 calories then they've chosen a too agressive goal and MFP spits out 1200 as the bare minimum a woman should eat.

I agree that protein is important, and if you're seriously low on that, that's not a good idea. It's fine to be over on fats, fiber and even carbs or sugar . . . but it's not good to be low on protein, fats, or micronutrients. Obviously, we can't go way over on everything (or many things) and still stay within calorie goal.

Nutrition won't directly affect bodyweight: That's directly about calories. However, nutrition is important for health, energy level, body composition (lean vs. fat), and more. (It can have some indirect effects on weight loss through energy level or appetite.)

I also agree with others that for many women, 1200 is a very aggressive calorie goal, hard to sustain, plus makes it more difficult to get adequate nutrition, and can increase health risks. You don't say whether you're overweight, or how overweight, or your age/height/weight, so it's hard to say for sure. Some very petite, very inactive, usually older women may need to eat that little. But for many, it's too low.

A person who has weight to lose would be better off sticking with a calorie goal designed to lose 0.5-1% of current body weight per week, with a bias toward the 0.5% (half a pound per hundred pounds of body weight) unless under close medical supervision to monitor for nutritional deficiencies or health complications.

The idea that all women need to eat 1200 calories or less to lose weight is a total myth.

If you want to balance your eating better, that's where reviewing your food logs can help. I'd encourage thinking more about how to get the things you're missing INTO your eating, and only think about what to take OUT to the extent you need to free up calories for the new choices.

I'll use protein as an example, since I had to work on that when first reducing calories. What I did was look at my food diary, see where my protein was coming from, and think about other protein sources I enjoy eating that could be increased to reach my protein goal. That identified some good things I could add to my eating routine.

Then I went through my diary looking for foods I was eating pretty often that were relatively high in calories, relatively low in protein, not so important to me for other nutrition (or general happiness). I would reduce those foods (portion size or frequency) to free up calories, and add some foods I like that made a better protein contribution.

I tried to focus on changing my habits, my routine that was on repeat, so that I didn't need to micromanage each and every day. By doing this repeatedly every few days for a while, I eventually worked my way to a reasonably happy set of routine eating habits that I enjoyed, that added up to the right number of calories, kept me reasonably full most of the time, and ticked the nutritional boxes in the way I wanted.

Best wishes!

The only thing I've ever tracked is calories and protein. I'm sure I'm getting plenty of fiber with daily oatmeal and other foods, and I expect I get at least as much fat as needed. Basically if I get around X calories and Y grams of protein, the rest likely falls into place for me.