1200 Cals killing me and not even working. Any advice please?

[Loulou0]

Can anybody advise please?

I'm 5'7 and 10st 5. Had my baby 4m ago and can't shift the last 7lb to get back to my ideal which is 9st 10.

I'm using mfp and eating 1200 cal per day.
Breakfast - 2 coffees, 2 eggs, slice of toast =350 cal
Lunch - salad =500 cal
Snack - 150 cal
Protein shake for dinner - 200 cal

I'm doing at least 15000 steps per day

Gym 3 times per week

Indulging a tiny bit at weekend. 1 x takeaway and a bit of chocolate. No alcohol at all.

Why aren't I losing weight??

I'm starting on 1200 cal so really don't think I could eat less.

Thanks, any tips would be great

My experience is, you have to stick with your diet without cheat days if you want to be effective. What toast are you eating, having wholemeal bread allowing the sugar release more even throughout the day, so you may feel less hungry or your have fewer mood swings.

Also, it depends on what exercise you are doing, if doing a cardio exercise you need to reach a certain heart rate for 10 mins before it starts burning calories effectively. Add a bit of weight training will help too, as muscle burns more calories.
1200 to begin with maybe a bit low, try 1,500 first then drop to 1,200 after a month or two.

It sounds like you're not having enough calories.
Try this calculator from the bbc website. play.bbc.co.uk/play/pen/glvtw4kct4?exitGameUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fguides%2Fz2wcbk7&palette=colour-palette-5&language=en-GB

Are you breastfeeding?

How sure are you that you're eating 1,200 cals? Are you weighing everything?

Could be your cheat day.. couple of things that stop weight loss / add to water retention is alcohol, caffeine and sodium. The thing with giving yourself so few calories is you have nowhere to go when you plateau. I would absolutely not recommend dropping any lower than 1200 and I wouldn't advise more exercise. Try upping your water intake and changing some of your coffee to decaf (caffeine is not your friend right now). In your training, hit the weights hard. You want more muscle mass. More muscle means a higher basal metabolic rate - you'll burn more calories whilst simply existing. Plateaus happen, it's annoying but they tend to work themselves out.

If you're weightlifting then it's no surprise you're not losing weight on the scales?

On my lifting days I eat 2000 calories a day, including a pre workout snack for strength and energy, post lift protein shake, then my dinner (usually rice and mackerel or chicken)

I've stopped weighing myself, and taking photos instead, and my body has changed dramatically. theres no way I'd make gains on so little calories! If you want to get your lifting gains you need fuel!

4 months post partum is still new, be kind to yourself!

Weigh the amount of butter you are using.
Check the amount of oil you are using to cook with
Check what you are drinking (eg fruit juices)
Check with pasta and rice and some frozen meats whether you are using and should be using the cooked or uncooked value. (Done this with pasta but in the early days I was so heavy it didn't matter overmuch)
Double check the portion size used to calculate the calories
Weigh everything.
If you are using a app to track check the entries you are using are accurate.
Are you coming up for your period (depo injection does it for my).
Wait two-three weeks with tight logging. Trust Calories in calories out.
Only eat back half your exercise calories. Personally I don't like the basic calories requirement calculators cos they assume you do the same exercise week in week out. I'd rather go for 1200 under log exercise and eat not all of it back. Also prevents under fuelling the body

I would put money on the fact that somehow you are eating more calories than you are recording. Cheat days shouldnt be cheat days, days you go over you still log and either accept you have a bit more weight to lose or balance it out over the course if the week or you won't lose any that day.

I am doing 1200cals and not having a cheat day. I agree a takeaway and chocolate could easily add another 1200cals to your total weekly calorie intake.

To be honest, 4 months after having a baby is quite soon, I wouldn't totally trust my body to WANT to lose weight by then!

Another one here that doesn't believe in starvation mode, sorry.

Reading your diet - there's a lot of margin for error. The dressing, the chocolate, the takeaway, the nuts, the protein bar. 500cals is a lot for a salad! I have a chicken salad - lettuce, sprouted grains, cucumber, tomato, avocado and a grilled chicken thigh - comes in at about 300 calories.I don't do dressing, just salt and pepper and maybe some lemon juice.

My advice (many wont agree, I'm sure!) Is to up your calories a little. Sometimes not losing is symptomatic of your body clinging on to fat because its feeling deprived and doesn't know when it's going to get nutrition again.

I spent so much of my twenties being a slave to eating 1200 calories and gaining the moment I went out for dinner or went even the slightest bit over. It was just so demoralising that so much work could be so easily undone and feeling like a failure/glutton and all other kinds of negative things. In my opinion, it's not healthy and looking back, I may have got very slim but I was not healthy mentally and I'm not someone who suffers with any kind of ED. By the way, nutritional advice is that 1200 is the bare minimum an adult woman should eat! When I finally gave up on that number - which is not easy when you've been brainwashed to believe anything more won't work- and began to eat more, I actually lost weight a darn sight easier and with less fluctuation after a night out.

Another thing to keep in mind, is what you're eating. It's easy to reach for carbs that don't really fill you up (a massive weakness of mine!). Make sure you're getting lean carbs and good fats. Beans and pulses have always been a life saver to me.

I'd be starving if I ate that!

A 200 cal shake for dinner would leave me feeling very deprived.

I also think 1200 cal is too little if you are excercising daily (but I have no nutritional credentials).

I've been doing between 1000-1200 calories a day. I'm plateauing as I'm 18st and vigourous exercise hurts a lot so I've been just walking 10,000 steps a day mostly. I've been eating a lot of chicken fresh veg ect with one cheat meal a week. I try and avoid bread like the plague. Help me

Too low calories. 1200 is not enough (unless you are about 4 foot tall and weigh about 5 stone!).

You are eating too little for the amount of exercise you are doing, so your body will work hard to hold on to anything it can to get energy from.
You need to relax on the calories and focus on healthy eating, dont have the shake just for dinner cause after exercise that is not enought for your muscles to recover and repair!

I am 5'7" and currently 63kg (trying to get back to 60kg) - so just under 10 stone. I am losing at quite a good pace on 1250 calories per day and very little exercise, so there's definitely something up here.

Are you using a food scale when you're measuring? And are you counting every dash of cooking oil, splash of milk etc?

The only other thing I can think of is, don't put your exercise into MFP and 'eat back' the calories burned - not sure if you do this or not, but this has caused a few friends to come unstuck

Good luck, hopefully it's just a plateau. I get them every now and again, usually related to my cycle and tend to find that I stay the same weight all month until shark week's over, then whoosh!