losing weight faster without exercising ?

You probably aren't gaining muscle on a 1200 calorie diet. However, if you have less muscle than you did last time you dieted, you may lose more slowly. Water weight fluctuations play in as well. When I lift, I retain water for a day or two afterward. I'm sure that other exercise has a similar effect on the muscles. Just be diligent and the weight will come off.

As the saying goes....'Abs are made in the kitchen'... I think 70% of what we look like stems from what we eat...the other is from exercise and genetics.

Plus, you're probably gaining muscle while exercising.... Or maybe you weigh less then you did before? I find the smaller I am the harder it is to lose weight because I have less fat.

because by exercising you gain muscle, which weighs more than fat..

No 1lb of muscle weighs exactly the same as 1lb of fat.

Fat takes up more space than muscle.

Muscle boosts the metabolism the more you work out and create muscle the more efficient your body will burn fat

Eat back what you exercise. & Make sure you're eating well, not just less.

This might explain what I mentioned about some muscle loss, which equals a slower metabolism. It may in your best interest to eat more calories and try to build some muscle so that you can burn more in the long run.

so if i eat back my exercise calories will i be losing faster than without eating exercise calorise?

Many will argue that you should eat back your exercise calories because MFP figures out how many calories you need to burn to lose a certain amount of weight per week. So, for example, if you are set to lose one pound a week, eating the calories MFP tells you to eat SHOULD result in that loss without exercising. Therefore, you exercise so that you can eat more.

I, personally, rarely ate back my exercise calories while I was actively losing weight. I figured that as long as I got at least the minimum nutrition my body needed (calories and macros), the extra burned calories were just icing on the proverbial cake. I cannot speak for others, but I never hit a plateau and I never experienced 'starvation mode'. I ate more when I was hungry, and less when I wasn't, but I never allowed myself to starve.

You will get a lot of advice about this topic. You will have to decide what makes the most sense to you and do that. Good luck!

I have now changed my focus from losing to building muscle, so I am eating back some of my exercise calories to help with the building process.

because by exercising you gain muscle, which weighs more than fat..

but can i gain muscle if i eat 1200 cals a day? and muscle doesn't weight more than fat...it just takes less space

right... i think when people say muscle weighs more than fat, they mean if you have a certain amount of space and fill it with either muscle or fat, the muscle would weigh more

When I first started.. the weight came off slower but I noticed huge changes in my clothes and the shape of my body. I think I was both losing fat and gaining muscle and they evened out. I added an extra days cardio, paid more attention to macros, and moved from lots of sodium and processed foods (just watching cals) to a much cleaner diet. I lose 2-2 /12 lbs a week regularly on a 1300 calorie diet and 5 solid workouts. I am still building muscle, toning up, and decreasing body fat. My lean muscle mass has increased not decreased. However, I am 5'1. If you are taller.. 1200-1300 calories may not be adequate.

Your ED may have a big role in what is going on. depending on whether you were anorexic or bulimic, either one ruins your metabolism. I know that after 6-7 years of fighting with one, trying to loose weight the healthy is not only triggering, but it also takes time fro your body to realize that you aren't going to deprive it. Our bodies were made to survive. Survive meaning what it did for cave men, food not always being plentiful, your body stored the calories that are excess for later. When your body realizes that you aren't going to be throwing up your calories (like after a binge) or just depriving it for the next few days, you body will start letting things go (i.e. fat). It realizes that you are going to feed it frequently and it no longer needs to hoard that excess that it receives.

Also, your lifestyle could play a role, maybe 4 years ago, your hormones were different (age, different birth control, having kids), you were doing other things (like a different job), fidgeting more can even contribute to weight loss. Also, like other have said you could be building muscle, you may not notice the difference on the scale, but the difference may show in you clothes.

Age maybe? It's harder to lose weight as you get older.

I doubt you're building much of anything, let alone muscle, on 1200 a day.

because by exercising you gain muscle, which weighs more than fat..

It's actually denser than fat. exchanging a pound of fat for a pound of muscle will result in visible slimming, but no weight drop.

Oh yeah, it happened to me. It has happened to me in the past, too (in my teens, when I was a competitive middle-distance runner, and in my 20s when I ran just for fun but quite hard).

I got a regular running habit going last year for a few months and my weight plateaued. Furthermore, my body fat (as measured by a colleague of mine using callipers) started going up, as did my waist measurement.

I ate more but that did not reverse the trend.

I have no clue why this happened, but I have now stopped running and am walking x5 each week and doing very short sessions of HIIT x3 a week. We'll see what transpires!

Some of us may be a bit 'special' with respect to exercise and weight loss. It may be rare but you're not the only one, I assure you!