To ask for help planning a 1200 calorie day

[iloveruby]

For health reasons I need to loose weight and it has been recommended that I follow a 1200 calorie diet but I'm really struggling to stick to this, mainly because of planning (or lack of).
So my AIBU to ask you to outline what you'd eat if you had to stick to 1200 a day??

when im trying to reduce calories, I eat tonnes of steamed vegetables.
I get those birdseye steamer bags and I will have two for lunch with a bit of tomato sauce from a jar, or pesto, or curry sauce from a jar.
I would try and have protein for breakfast, such as a couple of boiled eggs.

I would avoid bread and pasta and rice. Far too easy to overeat them and still not feel satisfied or get any nutrition from them.

A jacket potato in the evening maybe. If you get the extra special potatoes and not the cheap ones, theyre often really flavourful even without butter. You can just put a little salt on them, and maybe have them with a tin of tuna with a bit of value salad cream (much lower calorie than the branded stuff, and tastes the same and is much MUCH lower cal than mayonnaise) and a bit of sweetcorn and some salad.

Use the steamer bags of vegetables instead of pasta too sometimes with some bolognese. Noone ever got fat from eating vegetables

The questions are:

1. Do you have someone who supervises your diet and your calories intake for you?
2. Do you have someone who will help you with transition to a normal food intake once the diet is over?

1200 is extremely low. It would be low for me and I am a very very very petite (H&M size 0 to 2) small person.
Wouldn't going for more calories + exercise make more sense? Boost your metabolism instead of making it sluggish through lowered food intake.

Breakfast - 40g of porridge made with water (145kcal), tablespoon of honey (64), half a banana (50), splash of soya milk (30), protein shake (100). (Total = 389)

Lunch - Slice of rye bread (100), tin of tuna (120), tablespoon low fat mayo (35), 7 cherry tomatoes (15), cucumber slices (7), quarter of an avocado (80), handful of baby spinach (5), drizzle of balsamic vinegar (20). (Total = 382)

Dinner - Small portion of homemade turkey chilli* (227) , roasted sweet potato (100). (Total = 327)

Snack - 3 squares of dark chocolate (63).

All in - 1161

*Something like this: www.wellplated.com/healthy-turkey-chili/

I already do a fair bit of exercise, walk my dog and have got horses although perhaps I could do a bit more HIIT or similar

I lost 5 stone by never exercising, skipping breakfast and continuing to eat carbs. Find your own way, OP. I found that lots of tea and coffee, soup, salads, apples were what worked for me. I also ate less during the week so I could have weekend treats and wine.

low fat foods taste crap and are filled with sugar
diet foods just taste crap and cost money.
honey = maple syrup = sugar

lots of veg, easy on the crisps, sweets, biscuits. No smoothies, easy way to pork up. Nobody ever got fat eating lots of veg.

1200 sounds pretty low but if it was a medical professional (not a nutritionist, not a thickly made up blogger) then maybe it is right.

I had 3 stone to lose in June and I now have 1 stone left to go. I stuck to 1200 calories with a 1400/1600 day at the weekend. I'd echo what other people said about lots of veg. I tend to maximise the volume of food I get for my calories so I avoid bread as it's not filling enough to me to be worth the calories. I havent been exercising, i decided to start with diet and then add exercise as my TDEE dropped with my weight. I'm at the point now where I'm not losing any more so I need to add exercise but it sounds like you're pretty active anyway. I found using my fitness pal for logging and a fitbit to encourage me to move more really helped.

I went Vegan to eat 1200 a day. I found that if I 'ate' my exercise calories, I stopped losing. I had to exercise a lot to be able to eat some.

OP, try heavy weight lifting, it burns a lot and does the trick in terms of changing body shape and giving you healthy bones.

Chick Pea Curries with No Carbs Rice, came in at around a hundred calories and was filling.

I've just reread your OP. If it's for Health reasons, you need to do some lifting and change what you normally do.

I’m trying to do this for a month... starting today.
My plan:
Breakfast: Boiled egg, toast with butter and marmite, two cups of coffee semi skimmed milk = 241 calories
Lunch: 90g pasta with a homemade pasta sauce (tinned tomatoes, onion, chorizo) plus teaspoon Philadelphia cheese = 510 calories
Dinner: baked beans on toast = 212 calories
Snacks: small banana, 20g cheese, cafe latte = 201 calories

That leaves me about 40 short of 1200 and I’ll use that up by having another coffee with milk.

I lost over 7 stone with no exercise (disabled) and following 1200 diet, although to be honest most days are closer to 1000. I eat dinner at 6pm then nothing again until at least 11am. This suits me.