1200 calorie limit- too high for short people???

height is irrelevant to metabolic rate and calorie consumption/burn. Weight is already figured in.

OK, I should have said "small framed people who have a lower ideal weight.

What if a person is 60 years old, 4'9" and their ideal weight is 85 lbs? If they currently weigh 100 lbs, it will be hard for them to run any kind of calorie deficit on a 1200 cal per day diet.

Conversely, a 20 year old 6'6" man who needs to lose 15 lbs to get to an ideal weight would practically starve to death on 1200 cal.

Makes no sense to me. I would think the lower limit should not be one size fits all.

Seriously?

Read a book. See a doctor.

I have read books. I am not stupid or ill-informed. I am,however, questioning authority.
The books and articles never ever say why 1200 calories is the lower limit for any human of any size. Even the 'nutrients" part makes no sense. A body weighing 100 lbs isn't going to need as many vitamins as a 200 lb body. IT"S SMALLER.

For me, a 1200 calorie diet means only a 310 calorie deficit per day. I am not losing at any perceptible rate on it. In the past I've had to go about 1000 calories to see significant results.

Shouldn't the lower limit of calorie intake be lower for people who are short and older and therefore require fewer calories to maintain??

1200 calories is the minimum anyone should be eating. 1200 is considered the starvation level. If you eat less than that your metabolism will slow down and your body thinks it's starving. As a consequence, your body will hang onto the food you eat in the form of fat because it doesn't know when its next meal will be.

There is actually some research suggesting that it is (I'm at work so I can't look it up right now). I'm 5'1" and was on 1200 calories (and eating most of my exercise calories) for several months. I lost a few pounds, and then started creeping back up. I went to 1000 calories (still eating most of my exercise calories), and I'm slowly going down again. I'm very short, with a petite build, and a desk job. I talked to my doctor before reducing my calories and he said that with my build and my activity level, I could go down to 800. I get hungry on only 800 but 1000 is working well.
I will probably get crucified for saying this but I think that a smaller adult has smaller calorie needs. I don't think 1200 calories is a magic number. And some people will say to eat more but I did eat more. I was on about 1500 calories a day and that's what got me here in the first place.
Talk to your doctor or a nutritionist. Then decide for yourself.

Ok I know I am going to get yelled at for this post but ......
I am going to be 45....I am 5'2".....and at that height and age with a weight of 142.....my daily BMR is only 1240
so that is my maintence just to keep my body working everyday not including weight loss.

Sadly, the older we get the slower our bodies become.

For example my mother is 65 5'4" and 125 her BMR is 1120

another example is my son 6'3" 19 and weight 220...his BMR is like 2300

so height age and weight make a huge difference.

It becomes a matter of finding your balance between what your body had to have each day and what you burn.

It's important to note that BMR is not Maintenance Calorie Level. That would only be true if you were doing absolutely nothing else but lie still and have no exertion. And your absolutely right, body composition and other factors do change your BMR drastically.

No yelling I promise

Possibly depending on the individual. Seemingly I am on a "Tom Venuto" posting binge but the following excerpt of an article by him neatly summarises the position: (full article here: http://www.fitwatch.com/weight-loss/why-women-lose-weight-more-slowly-than-men-650.html)

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You may have heard (or, heh, realized), that it’s more difficult for women to lose fat than men. Immediately most people think it must be estrogen or hormonal issues. But perhaps the biggest factor is NOT hormones, but the simple fact that women are usually smaller and lighter than men.

When you have a smaller body, you have lower calorie needs. When you have lower calorie needs, your relative deficit (20%, 30% etc) gives you a smaller absolute deficit and therefore you lose fat more slowly than someone who is larger and can create a large deficit more easily.

For example, if my TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) is 3300 calories a day (I’m 5′ 8″ and moderately to very active), then a 20% deficit is 660 calories, which brings me to 2640 calories a day. On paper, that will give me about 1.3 lbs of wt loss per week, rather painlessly, I might add.

If I bumped my calorie burn up or decreased my intake by another 340 a day, that’s enough to give me a 2 lbs per week wt loss.
That’s hardly a starvation diet (Ahhh, the joys of being a man). For smaller women, the math equation is very different.

If your total daily energy expenditure is only 1970 calories, even at a VERY high exercise level, then a 20% deficit for you is only 394 calories which would put you at 1576 calories a day for (on paper) only 8/10th of a lb of fat loss/wk.

If you pursued your plan to take a more aggressive calorie deficit of 30%, that puts you at a 591 calorie deficit which would now drop you down to only 1382 calories/day.

That’s starting to get fairly low in calories. However, you would still have a fairly small calorie deficit. In fact, I would get to eat almost twice as many calories as you and I’d still get almost twice the weekly rate of fat loss!

What this all means is that women who are petite or have a small body size are going to lose fat more slowly than larger women and much more slowly than men, so you cannot compare yourself to them.

It’s great to be inspired by our success stories, but if you’re looking for someone to model yourself after, choose one of our success stories of someone your body size and wt, rather than the folks who started 100 lbs overweight and were therefore easily dropping 3 lbs a week.

ONE POUND a week of fat loss is much more in line with a realistic goal for someone of a smaller body size. Overweight people can lose it faster. The best thing you can do is to be extremely consistent with your nutrition over time.