Can you still lose weight by eating 1200 calories if..

[FlyHighLittleBee]

You eat quite a bit of junk? for instance, im doing MFP and yesterday I ate:

A ham salad sandwich
Beef hula hoops
Grapes
Half a bag of mini cheddars
Slow cooked pork chop, mash and veg
Kit Kat
Maoam stripe thingy

And it came under 1200 cals! But will I lose weight doing this, or do you have to eat 1200 cals of the right sorts of food?

You will lose weight if you're taking in less calories than you're expending. However, you can eat more of the 'good' stuff!

Perfect. I don't actually need a lot of food, but find it hard to give up my packet of crisps at lunch time and a treat or two at night. Sounds like MFP is definitely the way to go. Thanks!

I expect you will, but the question is can you stick to 1200 cals? That's really quite low and so perhaps quite hard to stick to?

Yes definitely! Back in my student days I did but must say I'd then be ravenous for a while and yo yo diet I'm giving low carb a go now

MFP only works if you weigh and track everything, so just be careful. I thought I was doing well but then realised that I wasn't counting oil, mayo, tomato sauce, milk, drinks etc. and as I wasn't properly weighing things like mash I was actually eating well over.

Not trying to put you off but just be aware - we tend to underestimate food and overestimate exercise.

A calorie isn't a calorie isn't a calorie!

Calories from carbs are the ones you need to avoid, because it's the carbs that make you fat.

You could prob get away with one small 'treat' if the rest of the food providing 1000 cals is unprocessed things like veg, fish, beans, natural yog, nuts and seeds etc and providing the vitamins, proteins and whatever else that you need....problem is for me when I start on things like crisps its really hard to then eat well for the rest of the day as I start craving other things.

Yes you'll lose weight, but if you eat junk you'll use your calories up in just a few mouthfuls and won't be full at all.

see I am of the opposite opinion. It really doesn't matter where your calories come from from a weight loss perspective. If you eat fewer than you expend, notwithstanding anything like PCOS or insulin resistance or diabetes, then you're going to lose weight.

I find it helpful to continue eating (and logging) snack treat foods, as that way I don't feel like I'm being deprived. I'd rather massively cut back on my main meal portions and then still have my snacks. Obviously, this mightn't be recommended from a nutritional point of view but psychologically it works for me.

You can but MFP will be telling you that you are way over your sugar for the day and in real life, not MFP, a calorie is not a calorie - carbs and especially sugar are much harder for your body to deal with so you are hampering your weightloss. Plus the point is to be healthy - snacks are not healthy.

Also I would doubt you are really under 1200 calories - I found when I did MFP that I always underestimated slightly what I ate, so my idea of a portion of mash, pork chop etc was prob actually more calories than I was letting on.

You prob had more than 1200 calories in that day.

But the point is, if you're already overweight so that you need to diet, chances are you're already on your way to insulin resistance - so it's especially important to realise that calories from sugar and carbs are not the ones you should be eating.

If you are doing exercise as well as dieting, then cutting out the majority of carbs is a really bad idea. You need carbs to fuel your body when you exercise. There's a reason why endurance athletes carbo-load before events.... I know if I don't eat carbs then I find swimming/ interval training etc very very hard work.

I'm not saying that you should fill up on carbs, in fact, filling up on lean protein and some good fats is a good idea. Just, don't cut them out entirely and work with your own psychology. I didn't mean I ate baby portions of main meals and then 3 bags of walkers a day but perhaps that wasn't clear from my earlier contribution :D

are you sure about your portion sizes? Unless you're talking about the tiniest sandwich and a spoonful of mash, I would be surprised if all this is really under 1200.

Agreed, weighing food is a boring but important if you're doing MFP or any calorie-based diet, otherwise it's easy to underestimate the calories you're actually eating.

What the OP described could be around 1200. Not totally impossible but as you say, would have to be a very small amount of mash, smallish pork chop, sandwich potentially without butter, etc.

If you're doing 'ordinary' exercise, cutting down on carbs isn't going to be a problem.

But it's perfectly possible to train, and train hard, if you're a low carber, because this means you've switched your body from burning carbs to burning fat. And even elite athletes have enough body fat to keep them going through an endurance event like a marathon.

It's simply not true that you have to have carbs for fuel!

As this will attest

I agree. I've been 1200- ing for as long as I can remember but it's sooo easy to let it creep up. I lose weight but very slowly.

I'm still not sure about the low carb theory but I agree that cutting carbs is pretty easy.

Low carb and high protein diet allows you to build muscle and lose weight at the same time - something people often think is not possible.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160127132741.htm

The low-carb diet theory is not universally accepted and there is evidence that carb restriction impacts performance even at low intensities and for shorter durations of exercise. If you're knackered you're less likely to keep up with exercise surely?

It is also not what the NHS advises, as it can lead to people missing out on macronutrients, dietary fibre, and other issues.

Are you sure that was under 1200 calories? Must have been really small portions.

But yeah, with that diet I imagine you'd lose weight. You'd also be missing a lot of essential nutrients though I reckon. Did you have 4 portions of veg with your dinner?

BIWI

Carbs don't make you fat. Eating more than you burn makes you fat. Can't believe anyone still believes this?

There's also a big difference between a 'carb' that's brown rice and fruit and a 'carb' that's a biscuit. You don't need carbs for fuel but you do need them to run your brain. At least 20% of our daily calories are used by our brains and the brain runs purely on glucose. Yes sugar is worse for us than fat generally but don't demonise an entire nutrient group.

Carbs do make you fat. Read any of the latest scientific literature.

Carbs like vegetables and salad (and some fruits) are all fine - it's not about cutting out or demonising an entire nutrient group.

But it's important to recognise that too much carbohydrate has a really negative impact on our blood sugar levels, resulting in too much insulin, which results ultimately in gaining fat.

It is also not what the NHS advises, as it can lead to people missing out on macronutrients, dietary fibre, and other issues

The NHS is woefully out of date.

And as long as you get your carbs from vegetables and salads, and some fruits, there's not a problem with missing out at all.

The latest scientific literature doesn't say what you think it says BIWI.

Cherry picked low quality studies don't make a body of evidence. The latest information is still that low carb doesn't show any particular benefit over any other diet.

If it works for people as a way of eating that is fine. But the idea that calories from carbs are worse than any other type is pseudoscience rather than science.