Does anyone struggle with eating 1200 calories

[alleillveoka]

I'm really struggling lately
Breakfast today -banana and a two egg omelette (say 280 cals )
Lunch was -a roast chicken sandwich which was 460 cals
So there is 740 calories already
Which leaves me with 460 for the rest of the day

I'm hungry already for a snack and I only had lunch half hour ago

Stop eating bread/sandwiches. That's at least 300 cals just on bread!

That works for me
I would rather push breakfast back and have bigger meals than 100 cal snack type things

I do 1300 calories and intermittent fasting. I've lost 32lbs in 8 weeks.

Don't start eating till 12 (usually 1 tbh) and stop at 8. (Usually 7ish) but I like having a little wiggle room. I'm doing no carbs too

I usually have -
1pm Lunch - 2 x boiled eggs
Beef slices / chicken / some kind of protein / prawns & ocean sticks
Celery sticks
Strawberries / grapes
Handful of almonds .

Tea -
6pm - protein (fish/chicken/beef) plus loads of veggies. Caulif rice / curry or lettuce chicken wraps with cheese & salads.

It takes a week or two to adjust but my appetite is so much smaller now and the weight is falling off and I feel not starved. (I did have quite a bit to Lose)

I only drink black coffee & water also.

I did a 1200 calorie diet many years ago and it was miserable going but it did pave the way to research more and then to eat more and start weight training. Turns out that’s a win win as you gain muscle which is great for your health in future years & you burn more calories at rest, it’s great for my mental health while going through peri menopause to boot.

The results take longer but the journey to get there was far happier 😊

Yes because that’s very low.

Check one of the online calculator things, and work out the deficit you need to loose weight.

Yes, because it's not enough food for a grown adult.

I would urge you, and anyone else reading, to leave the disordered and unhealthy world of MN weight loss and seek somewhere that isn't essentially a pro-ana forum.

Eat more, OP. Just eat more.

I do much better on 1600 cals. It means I can hit it consistently, don't feel hungry and can have a "treat" each day. Therefore, I can stick to it and so actually lose more than when on 1200 plus binges when the 1200 is too restrictive

Use the James smith calculator to work out your calories. The apps give you way too few. For me mfp gives me 1300. James smith gives me 1700 so I split the difference at 1500 which is a comfortable amount for me and gives 1-2 lb loss a week

This thread has really confused me! Hopefully someone can make it simpler for me haha. I just started my weight loss journey today, I put my height and weight in to my app and it said to lose weight I needed to be eating 1600 calories per day. I've exercised today too and it says I've burned 700 calories so now it's saying I can eat more calories is that right??

I typically burn 1400 -1500 calories a day ( more at weekend when I amnt sitting at a desk all day )

Not that tall, not short either , healthy BMI

So 1200 is losing weight territory for me not self abuse as some seem to suggest here !

I would have a lot more veg at lunch - say one slice bread not 2 and a large salad ( carrot and cabbage work well and are cheap ) with a small amount of dressing

And I'd save the banana for snack time not breakfast - perhaps have tomatoes with your eggs instead

It's not easy because your body doesn't want to lose the weight not because you are eating the wrong things

I'm not doing it currently but find i adjust fully after about a week.

I'd say- don't use up calories on carby foods, you don't get much satisfaction. You could swap the bread in your sandwich for more salad and maybe some chickpeas and the banana for some frozen berries and yogurt, some veg like spinach or an apple with your eggs. I used to make all-lentil flatbreads to use like wraps or chapattis (assemble when needed if using for a wrap)- cam't remember the exact calorie count but they had more protein than bread and high fibre.

If you only have time for a bought sandwich then egg and cress is usually the lowest cal.

Frozen spinach is a godsend. It lets you really increase the bulk of whatever you cook with negligible cals and a nice savoury background flavour so very satisfying. Just adjust the flavours/ garlic to accommodate the extra amount of dish.

Decide when you need your main meal of the day to be and make the most of that, saving elsewhere. If skipping breakfast works for you then it allows you to have 2 quite substantial meals later.

Shiritaki noodles are a fabulous diet food. If you've not tried them they are very low calorie noodles made of konjac root. Serve in a sauce not as a bed as they need a lot of flavour. Sesame sauce and veg or in a bolognese type veggie bake with low fat cheese is my favourite

Drink 2l of water or herbal tea a day.

I find I need fats around my period- include healthy ones like dark choc, nuts, tahini dressing or nut butter.

If you're really struggling it may be worth setting your limit a bit higher and sticking to it rather than being miserable on 1200. You can always reduce it. There's a noticeable difference between 1200 and 1400 in terms of food and you'll still lose weight.

I did old weightwatchers years ago (my weight fluctuates a lot due to medication). I think my points limit worked out at about 1350 cals or so and allowed unlimited non- starchy veg and certain other things- egg whites, not sure what else. This was really effective too so could be worth trying that way.

Weight training is fantastic, I just love it. I'm quite a stocky bugger by nature so it doesn't make me slender and lithe but the difference in strength, capability and definition is such a confidence boost

Mostly Ignore the exercise calories- the estimate is usually way too high , and if you did burn and extra 700 the chances are you will be less active this evening and burn less

Maybes allow an extra couple of hundred

Probably not, given that apps and wearable trackers overestimate the amount of calories burned by anywhere from 30-90%. The chances that you actually burned 700 calories are fairly low, and if you ate those calories back, you'd wind up gaining weight.

To lose weight you need to eat fewer calories than your TDEE, but the issue there is most TDEE calculators are inaccurate and none of them can take your personal physiology into account, so the answer is based on many assumptions about "average".

I don’t struggle too much but do tend to eat more over the weekend. I have to eat this way because of gallstones so allowed very little fat.

My usual day is
B: 0% fat yogurt, mug of tea
D: chicken and salad on a large whole meal bap
T: chicken breast or fish with new potatoes and loads of green veg

For a snack I love Mallow and Marsh salted caramel marshmallows
This is usually under 1200 daily but it’s fat I need to worry about not calories.

At the weekend I might do a big pasta dish or make a low fat curry so my calorie intake is more

1200-1350 is weight loss territory for me too (5'6") not starvation if I eat the right foods. I've had to do this several times thanks to aforementioned medical issue and have felt perfectly healthy. Blood results have been fine too.

Calorie control is about getting the most out of your allowance rather than small portions of things that don't fill you up so it's miserable

apps and wearable trackers overestimate the amount of calories burned by anywhere from 30-90%.

Mine doesn't get it wrong actually, not to extent I can verify it anyway.

I could manage 1200/day if I do feck all for exercise. Only because I'm 50+ yo.

This is a pretty good and fairly recent meta-analysis of studies about the accuracy of wearables: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7509623/

The takeaway finding for energy expenditure is that across brands, they're all inaccurate, ranging from mildly to wildly. While it's true that a wearable becomes more accurate if you provide it with more personal data, it still won't account for your personal physiology beyond some basics and then calculates based on assumptions.

This is a single study, but it's more recent. It shows accuracy has improved but is by no means terrific: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17461391.2021.2023656?journalCode=tejs20

@Icedlatteplease this isn't true for everyone though, I lose consistently on 1900, maintain on 2000-2100 and anything over 2200 I start gaining, I tried 1500 to crash diet for a wedding and lost my periods.

Trouble is op it's not one size fits all.

Have you gone straight from 'normal eating' to 1200 OP? Maybe gradually bring it down 1800 - 1700 - 1600.

Find the sweet spot where you're slowly losing weight but feel ok

"In a recent review of 10 articles, Bunn et al 12] noted tendencies of wearables to underestimate energy expenditure, heart rate, and step count."

That is different from my experience. Mine always over-estimate step count (about 10% for actual steps, and counts steps for cycling).

"For energy expenditure estimates, no brand of wearable was within ±3% measurement error more than 13% of the time (Figure 5).

Underestimation of energy expenditure (less than −3%) was observed in Garmin wearables 69% (37/51) of the time and in Withings wearables 74% (34/46) of the time.
Conversely, Apple wearables overestimated energy expenditure 58% (18/31) of the time and Polar wearables overestimated energy expenditure 69% (9/13) of the time.

Fitbit devices tended to provide inaccurate measures compared with the criterion, underestimating 48.4% (76/157) of the time and overestimating 39.5% (62/157) of the time, despite the boxplot in Figure 5 showing a reasonable median value for accuracy."

I suspect I end up working with a median value, I'm going by daily totals not per event totals.

"There was an overall tendency to underestimate energy expenditure"

So that is really interesting.

Fitbits are all over the place, but more likely to UNDERESTIMATE.
Apple watches tend to Over-estimate.
Garmins & Withings slightly underestimate.

the review does NOT agree at all with PP who said "wearable trackers overestimate the amount of calories burned by anywhere from 30-90%." There was no 90%, and under-estimating is actually more common (by device) than over-estimates.

the review does NOT agree at all with PP who said "wearable trackers overestimate the amount of calories burned by anywhere from 30-90%." There was no 90%, and under-estimating is actually more common (by device) than over-estimates.

Did you look at figure 5, with the MPE being off by as much as 200% under with Apple? What you've quoted is correct in terms of the amount of time the wearables were wrong, and why they were wrong in that they were over or under, but the figure plots how much each device was over/under - and it's way more than 90% in many cases.

Depends. If I've been eating a lot more than that and suddenly try to drop to 1200 I'm ravenous, however, if I'm dieting a while my stomach shrinks and I can do it.

Right now I'm in the stretched stomach, can't do it phase.

Just saw you're 5'7.

1200 is way too low, I'm 5'0 and often find it hard, as above.

I'm 5'3 and currently 121lb - I lost 10lb by sticking to 1500ish for 3 months
A normal day is 100ml low fat yogurt, 40g of Fuel granola, berries
Lunch is a diet ready meal
Dinner is either spag bol, chili, stir fry, curry, salmon 600 calories or so
Either clear whey isolate or a salted caramel protein bar
A few rich teas
A banana
Tea or white coffee
I tracked my calories until I got used to it

Figure 5 ranges from 100% low (you can't get lower than 100% under) to 200% over. So saying 30-90% over is still a mis-statement since it ignores the 100% under.

Compared to formulae on Internet and heart rate from a Polar chest strap and a Garmin chest strap (don't ask, I'm an anorak), and calorie counting (my weight is stable), my fitbit estimates for my calorie needs were within 2-7%. I can't remember which way because honestly who would keep track, they were the same enough. So I was very satisfied. I guess I'm the lucky person with an accurate device. Some of the original studies in that article used same methods as me.

I did the fast 800 to lose lockdown weight - so 800 calories a day.

By comparison, 1200 seems like loads to me. I found that the easiest way to cut calories is to skip a meal. I would skip breakfast. Yes you might be a bit hungry in the morning, but at least you know that you've got a couple of decent meals to look forward to.