MFP 1200 cal goal

So my fitness pal says for me to eat 1200 calories a day to lose 2 lb. a week. If I eat anything less than that it tells me that I am not eating enough calories and to eat more, but if I eat anything more than that I am over my calorie goal. That doesn't make any sense to me since it is almost impossible to eat exactly 1200 calories. I feel like mfp shouldn't make 1200 calories a goal if anything less than that is not enough. Does anyone else have this problem?

More chocolatey goodness:

"My first week of increased calories, I dropped the 3.4lb gain I had from last week (water weight I'm sure, I ate horribly the 2 days before my previous WI), plus an additional pound - putting me at my lowest weight since joining MFP. I'm at 20% cut, and eat SO much more than I ever thought I could and still lose. I'm excited to see if I can continue losing in the coming weeks! My energy levels are awesome, I can think clearly, it's just all around been a great experience so far. Just starting week 2 now, but I promised I'd give it a full month either way, so we'll see how it goes!"


"Thank you so much for all this great information!

Since I am technically still obese by BMI standards, I went with 30% below TDEE, rounded to 1500. (I was doing 1200 for several weeks before.) I fully expected to just maintain or even gain a little for a couple weeks but, instead, I lost 2.6 lbs the first week upping my calories. I was willing to try this because I was having such a hard time at 1200. I am thrilled to be able to eat more AND still see good weight loss.

For anyone struggling at their current calorie goal, please run the numbers and give this a shot. Like some have said, it may take a few weeks before you start seeing the scale go down but it is worth it on a daily basis to have a more reasonable goal and to still have energy and not be grumpy all the time.

Best wishes!"

I find it harder to record the exercise, because I don't know exactly how many calories I am burning. I don't want to put more than I am. Well, Ill try to eat a but more on the days I go to the gym, and stay at my regular calories on other days.

She's trying to lose 60 lbs. She has 210,000 calories in her tank.

Then it should be possible to forgo eating altogether for a little while and use up that gas tank then it sounds like.

Sounds like if 1500 is avg TDEE, just don't eat for 140 days and it should use up that gas tank.

Obviously if she quit eating she would use it up but that's not what I'm advocating. Nor am I advocating 1200 or any particular level. I'm just correcting misinfo. Burning more than you eat is NOT like driving on an empty gas tank.

I guess for some people they're afraid of burning yesterday's calories and they psychologically or perhaps even physically feel like they're on empty but they have plenty of calories to fuel their activity. Maybe their blood sugar gets too low, I don't know. But their 'tank' is not empty and deficit eating is not dangerous, as long as one eats over recommended minimums.

By that logic, the smaller the deficit, the healthier? So a 200 lb. woman should spend the next 5 years losing 50 lbs.? That's clearly not optimal, either. There are health benefits to getting your body to a healthy weight, especially for the obese.

It's just a matter of choices. If you believe that a shallow deficit of say 300 calories a day is best (and losing 3 lbs/month), that's ok. If you think losing 2 lbs/week is better for your life and goals, that's considered safe, too. If one is concerned that the former is safER than the latter, they can definitely research that.

But telling them here that 2 lbs/week is dangerous is just misinformation.

I wish I was cool enough to be in Dan's group....*looks away wistfully into the distance*

Your body needs specific nutrients every single day to use a long with that energy.

I've been reading about eat less vs eat more cals since I joined MFP...does anybody have any results longer than 2wks progress? That's all I've read on this thread - I need to see some long term results because I'm def in the "calories in/calories out" group.