HI LUCY ~ I was wondering how you decided on how many calories to eat at the beginning of your journey? From my knowledge and experience, 1200 seems way too low to start out at -- becuz you will inevitably hit some plateaus along the way, and you want to have some leeway so that you can cut down about 50-100 cals to get your weightloss going again.
Our PURPLE, who will come by sometime this week; started out at 2000 to 2200 calories and lost weight on that. Then when she hit a plateau, she would lower her calories to get losing again. Now that she has reached her goal weight (or close to it), she is eating about 1500 calories a day to maintain her loss of over 120 lbs. (You are starting out lower than that)
I started at 2100 calories which was a recommended average amount by a science researcher in New York; now I am doing about 1800 during the week and 1800-2000 during the weekend, give or take a few cals. This way, I have some flexibility too. Our local dietician told my mother that IHHO, no adult should eat less than 1500 calories a day, as the body needs that much just to be healthy, especially a larger person.
We have to make sure that we are eating an amount that we could maintain for the rest of our lives. If we eat too low now, then when we increase our intake later on, we will gain all the weight back -- which has happened to me in the past, many times. There is a CALORIE COUNTERS FORUM on this site -- maybe you could start a thread there and ask others their thoughts about how much they think you should eat each day based on your weight & height.
I know cutting 500 calories a day, should result in a 1-2 lb loss for each week. In the beginning, you may lose more, but some of that will be water, then it will be fat from about 3-4 weeks and on ...