People Eating 1200 a Day

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I eat a ton of food and stay at 1200, you just have to pick the right types of foods. And making generalizations about everyone's metabolism isn't the best idea.[/quote]

I totally agree - I've been on 1200 and have lost 22 pounds. My diary is open to friends, so feel free to add me

My beachbody coach increased my calories from 1200 to 1500 and changed my macros and that broke a year plateau. I'm working on cleaning up my diet, so that said, you can add me and look at my diary. I live in Texas and can't refuse a bowl of good salsa and chips. Also during the summer I over indulge on the adult beverages. That said, the scale keeps moving down. I'm also within 5 lbs of my ideal weight now.

is ur diary accurate!? are u eating soup and lasagna for breakfast, next to nothing for lunch, breakfast foods for dinner, and full meals as snacks?!

I eat clean, and eat approx 1200/day...never over 1500. It is a struggle to make it though! The more processed your foods, the more calories in my experience.

Cook up some turkey burgers, chicken, fish, veggies...all in 4 oz meat portions, I don't measure my veggies though - they hardly have any calories, so even if I'm off a little it's not really going to matter. You'll be surprised how much you can eat! I eat 6 meals a day and sometimes have to push to get to 1200...

Some of my favorite healthy low cal tricks:

Baking skinless boneless chicken in broth, covered. Keeps it super moist. Then I dip in soy and sesame seeds while eating.

Pan-fried zucchini. I hate hate hate veggies, but this works. Chop up a zucchini, 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan, season zucchini with garlic salt.

Fish fish fish fish

I love fruit so I eat apples pretty regularly (80 cals) and they fill me up for a bit.

Cherry/grape tomatoes, cucumber salads, etc, are also nice low cal treats.

I like to pan fry pork loin plain as well. Pork loin has a lot of flavor and isn't too much higher cal than chicken.

I could never do 1200 calories for more than 2-3 days in a row.

Almost gave up, but then I gave myself a range

ROCK BOTTOM: 1200 calories
TARGET: MFP lose 1 lb a week until that got down to 1200 then switched to lose 1/2 lb a week
HIGH END: Maintain calories for GOAL WEIGHT

As long as I stayed in this range I would continue to lose and it was much easier to stick with.
__________
SAFE VALVE: Maintain calories for CURRENT WEIGHT
I shouldn't gain.
No need to beat myself up with guilt... If I have a bad day, just breathe, take a break and move on when I'm ready.

I also disagree with some of the posts on here generalizing by saying 1200 is too low.
You just need to listen to your body and take it from there. It depends on how active you are. But tracking your calories is the first step. You'll see where you are wasting your calories and can adjust. (For me, I saw how much calories, sugar and sodium I was really intaking and its all about adjusting. I've worked on calories and sugar, but still have issues some days w/ sodium)

Except for my exercise routine, I am sedentary (due to working from home, and working long hours). So 1200 works for me. (I usually try to eat 1200-1300 as I eat back some of my exercise calories).
And it doesn't mean you're starving as some people will say. You should only be starving if you're still trying to eat mainly bad foods. As your portions will be very small..
You just have to eat the right foods. The healthier foods you eat, the more you can eat. Some days when I eat really well, I even find myself looking for a way to get my calories up to 1200 as I'm not hungry. I'll make a protein shake for a snack, eat apple slices with 'better than peanut butter' spread, eat hummus with red pepper slices, add a serving of blue chips to my "taco salad", etc...
Now of course everyday isn't easy. On weekends/going out to eat, it is harder for me. But I allow myself freedom on those days. I will allow an approx 1500-1600 calorie day about once a week (but I make sure I work out those days).

Good luck!!

She is RIGHT! I disagree on the persons saying 1200 is not enough, it is for some people, not everyone. So I think you should start as you are, if you do not lose and your eating the right foods and exercising up your calories. Iv lost 30 in 12 weeks before. I ate 1200 calories a day, one day I would go over probably 2000 or more, just ONE day. I would work out 4 or 5 days a week burning an average of 500-800 calories and only sometimes would I eat back those burned calories, some ppl told me I was basically stupid, but Im unsure why because I WAS NOT STARVING at all because I chose the proper foods to complete my 1200! I have a lot of friends that have lost a good amount of weight doing 1300-1500 calories so EVERYONE is DIFFERENT!!!

Op, what I recommend is experimenting and finding out what works best for you. Start with the 1200 calories. The way that weight/fat loss works is through an overall deficit in the amount of calories that you are taking in when compared to the amount of calories that your uses to fuel your daily activities. Think about it like a math equation. Weight loss = Calorie Input - Calorie Output. So as long as the calorie input is less than the calorie output you are slowly loosing weight. That is a steadfast truth!

With that logic you can drop your calories as low as you want in order to loose fat faster right? Wrong!!! There a few exceptions to this rule. Your body has defense mechanisms against extreme calorie deficits. That's where your metabolism/hunger/muscle loss comes into play. If your body notices that you are inputting too little calories, the first thing that it will do is tell you that it wants food. That's the way of telling you that it wants food to continue to process the activities for the day. That's why when you exercise, you get hungry soon after. Your body expended a lot of calories from exercises and it wants you to replenish them, by eating more food (though if you're trying to maintain a deficit you probably don't want to give your body as much as it wants as that will bring you out of the deficit).

If your body finds that it is getting WAY to little calories, it will then first try to get rid of any sort of unnecessary matter on your body. Muscle weighs more than fat, so your body will, in extreme deficits, get rid of it quickly. It takes more caloric expenditure to maintain over fat, which weighs less. That's why exercise/weight training is extremely beneficial to losing weight, as you will give your body a reason to maintain lean body mass (use it or lose it principle) and get rid of fat as there is no use for it. But all an extreme deficit with no exercise will do is make you skinny with a huge gut (I have experience there, it sucks!!!!)

Finally if your body is experiencing a calorie deficit over a long period of time, it will often adapt by lowering the amount of energy output, otherwise known as slowing down you metabolism. The body of people with high metabolism has no reservations in it's usage of calories and will burn them freely which makes it hard for them to put on any weight (ie genetically skinny people), while the body of those with low metabolism is much more selective about how it uses it's energy and is more likely to store it away in case of an "emergency". That emergency weight, if not careful will often times be fat (ie genetically chubbier people). Now, if your body sees that over time it's not getting as many calories as it wants it will begin to lean towards slowing your metabolism as it is afraid that it will soon starve. That's why people advocate even during long periods of weight loss efforts to have the occasional high calorie or "cheat day" (though the notion is widely abused). The excess calories trick the body into believing that you're going to start giving it more calories, and for people who hit plateaus due to a low metabolism this is a great way to speed it back up, making the body use more calories so that a bigger deficit can be created and more weight will be lost.

There is a principle that says "eat more to lose more" and that's sort of what I like to go by. Eat as much food as you can as long as your still creating a calorie deficit. To find how much you can eat, you can either try to use a calorie calculator (these have varying levels of success so take them with a grain of salt) or do a little experimenting. Start logging EVERYTHING YOU PUT INTO YOUR MOUTH! If you swallow a fly, you better count it hahahaha. Really though, if you don't have an exact look at how much your eating there will always be a huge amount of risk of error. Be strict, it's tough but worth it in the long run. For the first couple of weeks, eat the 1200 calories. Take your weight once a week on at the same day and time each week. After a couple weeks if you are seeing a consistent amount of weight loss, up the amount of calories by 200 or so. Repeat the process. If you are still consistently loosing weight up the calories a little more. Keep doing this until you find yourself loosing 1-2lbs a week on average and you don't feel too hungry. That's going to be the amount of calories you'll want to be eating at to lose weight. By eating a small deficit, rather than a large one, the body will be more inclined to take fat off before muscle as it doesn't feel the express to drop weight right away, rather it can be more relaxed about what your body wants and needs.

Now when it comes to choosing what you can eat, you can really eat anything to be quite honest (yes people will bash on me here). When in a deficit your body sees calories as calories (some small discrepancies, but not enough for most people to worry about). There is no such thing as a good calorie vs a bad calorie. If you are in a good deficit you WILL lose weight. Bottom line. Now do I say go out and eat junk all the time? Wrong. There are health concerns that come with eating an excess of bad foods vs eating more wholesome foods. But when it comes strictly to weight loss, calorie deficit is the only thing that matters.
If you look at my food log, you'll see that I've had pizza on multiple occasions and other things many would freak out about when loosing weight, but all I did was stay under my calorie limit and the weight comes off (I've went from 175-155 in 2 months this way). The only way that I will say whole foods are better for weight loss has to do with food satiety, which how full certain foods make you feel. Wholesome prepacked foods make you feel very full and therefore the body has less chance of getting hungry and you have less chance of going over your calorie limit, while the opposite can be said for junk.

That's weight/fat loss in a nutshell. It takes work and experimentation, but follow the deficit rule and you'll be good to go!!! Good luck!!!!

Good morning everyone!

Im also on my second day. I will be sure to be more detailed in my entries, hopefully it will help myself get the most out of 1200 and others too.

Thanks in advance for those I borrow ideas from : )

prepackaged food is also loaded with preservatives and things you cannot pronounce that your body cannot digest.