Seriously ... 1200 calories or less

Playing devil's advocate here....I recently had 2 heath checks, 1 BUPA and 1 Nuffield, neither of which shrank back when I told them of the 1200 calorie suggestion. Common sense ought to apply here, you know that a balance of lean meats, fish, pulses, oats and fibre are your friends and you can have a full tummy as much as you want as long as you try and offset it with some form of cardio activity.

I also know that as a 5'6" 146 lb woman of 30 trying to lose 1 stone it appears to be the hardest thing in the universe.

I absolutely know that I could survive just fine on 1200 calories. The biggest enemy for me is booze. Without a doubt, if I cut it out completely I would be certainly finding it easier to stay on 1200 and give myself a fighting chance of actually losing the weight.

I have precious little time in my life for exercise however I will be sticking to my 30 min walk in the morning and also re starting Zumba and 1 other exercise class in a week, just to get me moving more! Couple that with stripping out booze 6 out of 7 days I hope that will at least bring me closer to where I want to be without going into "starvation mode".

I believe it can be done.

Playing devil's advocate here....I recently had 2 heath checks, 1 BUPA and 1 Nuffield, neither of which shrank back when I told them of the 1200 calorie suggestion. Common sense ought to apply here, you know that a balance of lean meats, fish, pulses, oats and fibre are your friends and you can have a full tummy as much as you want as long as you try and offset it with some form of cardio activity.

I also know that as a 5'6" 146 lb woman of 30 trying to lose 1 stone it appears to be the hardest thing in the universe.

I absolutely know that I could survive just fine on 1200 calories. The biggest enemy for me is booze. Without a doubt, if I cut it out completely I would be certainly finding it easier to stay on 1200 and give myself a fighting chance of actually losing the weight.

I have precious little time in my life for exercise however I will be sticking to my 30 min walk in the morning and also re starting Zumba and 1 other exercise class in a week, just to get me moving more! Couple that with stripping out booze 6 out of 7 days I hope that will at least bring me closer to where I want to be without going into "starvation mode".

I believe it can be done.

I lost at 1200. I lost at under 1000. For the most part, I was either not hungry or able to ignore being hungry enough to not feel hungry.

But I lost better at significantly more. More of what I lost was from fat. And it was psychologically a lot better to have my settings for, for instance, one pound a week and losing on average one pound a week, then trying to lose two pounds a week and losing at very most one pound a week. I can't speak for anyone else, but I thought there was something really wrong with me when I was eating under 1000 calories a day and losing about a half pound every OTHER week. I felt like a failure, and felt like I lacked discipline, and I made excuses like, "My metabolism is just slow." I thought I'd have to cut calories even more to lose.

And I was wrong.

Last time, losing weight did seem like the hardest thing in the world, because I was making it the hardest thing in the world. This time, it felt effortless, because I understood that when you don't have much to lose, progress will and should be slow. I knew in that final ten pounds, I was only going to lose a half pound a week. It was going to be slow... but slow doesn't mean hard.

The thought is that if you have less than 50 pounds to lose that you're likely under 200 pounds already--the safe rate is generally 1% of your bodyweight. So if you're under 200 pounds you cannot "safely" lose 2 pounds a week if you go by the 1% standard.

I think there is something MFP can do here to help. If I press the button to complete the day's entry at 1000 calories it gives a much lower projected weight in 5 weeks eg "If every day was like today you'd weigh 209 pounds". When I put the rest of my calories in - up to 1700 - the projected weight is much higher. This makes it look like the less calories you eat the more you will lose.
Of course there is the warning about dipping below 1200 cals but I think they should address this because the BIG part of the message is eat less cals and lose more weight.
Does that make sense? Or only to me.......

If the "If every day were like today" message is something that motivates/frustrates you, make sure to change your activity level rather than just increasing your calorie goal.

At sedentary, I'd get about under 1600 calories, at lightly active, around 1700, and as active (where I have it set now) I'm at 1840. I'm not *that* active, but it's what it takes to get me the right amount of base calories.

I lost all the weight I wanted eating 1200 calories and not exercising. I now eat 1400 to maintain. I also have a food scale so I know my portion size is correct. I think a lot of people are eating more calories then they think.

Um.. my TDEE is barely over 1500 calories because I'm short. I pretty much have to eat <1200 calories to lose weight.