Hi everybody,

I just started my first day using a "food journal." I always thought I could figure well enough in my head what I was eating but it just stressed me out constantly adding calories in my head and thinking about everything I had eaten. I think this will work better

I was adding up my calories for the day and so far..:

BFAST:
Shredded Wheats - 180 calories
1/2 Cup Skim milk - 45 calories
Pear - 80 calories

SNACK1:
Cottage Cheese 75 calories?
Carrot Sticks - 35 calories

LUNCH:
Trader Joes vegetable lentil soup (The sodium, I know, I know. I try to have only one high sodium meal a day if at all). - 220 calories
1 piece of whole grain bread - 90 calories

SNACK2:
Single serving of raw almonds - roughly 200 calories?
Apple - 50 calories

Proposed Dinner is grilled chicken and veggies (boiled).

Usually when I calorie count in my head I do not add the caloric values of fruits and veggies. I will continue to not do so for most green vegetables. Fruits have a lot of carbs so I decided to start including those.

So according to my count.. I've almost reached 1000 calories! Meaning my dinner is supposed to stay under 200 as I'm trying to stay under 1200 calories.. (Considering I'm eating grilled chicken and veggies that shouldn't be too hard..) However, wow. Am I eating to much of any certain thing? Maybe my snacks are too much.. I just don't stay full on a single piece of fruit :/ Help please!

I'm not sure what you're "wow"ing about. Are you feeling happy and satisfied with this quantity of food? Or feeling hungry and desperate all the time? Are you feeling peaceful and free with your journaling, or is it making you obsess harder?

I've never been able to do 1200 calories per day, and I don't plan to try it again. I simply can't function well on that little food. I eat more in the range of 1800-2300 when I'm losing weight, and I generally feel happy and satisfied and not terribly obsessed.

There's no "right" way to do this, other than what works best for you, and which improves physical and mental/emotional health.

Check out a variety of calorie counters. I think you are eating much too little, especially if you are not feeling full. I eat around 1400 - 1500 calories a day to lose.

Your quantities and choices look good to me, but 1200 calories seems so low for someone your height. Everyone's body is unique and maybe yours will only shed weight on 1200 a day, but chances are good you could lose just as well (or better) with a larger calorie budget.

I'm eating 1500 calories a day and am a shortie who works at her computer desk, yet I've lost an average of a pound and a half a week (would've been more but for Thanksgiving and Christmas day meals, I'm sure of it!).

Nuts are delicious and nutritious, but they're also calorie-dense. If you're feeling hungry, you may want to eat smaller nut portions and larger servings of things that take up a lot of space--roasted mixed vegetables, for instance.

I don't stay full on a piece of fruit, either. I do, however, stay full on a piece of fruit paired with a protein--an apple and a stick of string cheese, an orange and some cottage cheese, some grapes and some walnuts (I just have to watch my serving size with those walnuts ).

Anyway, consider bumping up your calories to 1400-1600 or so if 1200 is leaving you hungry. Sometimes cutting calories lower doesn't actually result in faster weight loss, just more of a struggle.

I agree with Nola Celeste... you need more protein. It keeps you fuller longer.

200 calories of Almonds seems like a lot too me... do they satisfy you? Just a thought.

I think under 1200 is not recommended. My doctor told me 1200 calories... however when I weigh and count EVERTYTHING I am probably more around 1400-1500.

Another idea for you is to get more fiber in your diet. Fiber will keep you feeling full longer. A simple switch is your cereal. I eat Fiber One cereal..it has 13g of fiber and only 160 calories in a cup. Also, you can try benefiber or any other fiber supplement that you can add to your water. I bought a small bottle of benefiber, but I haven't tried it yet. They advertise that you can add it to water and it's almost tasteless.

1200 calories is not enough for you- it's too low no wonder you are hungry.

I suggest 1500-1600 calories for now, try it for two weeks and if you are losing weight on that number stick to it. If you are feeling hunger a lot your body will just hold onto the fat more.

I don't really want to argue the 1200 calorie thing again, except to say that I'm 5'10" and lost 130 lbs. on 1200 a day with no problems whatsoever. It is very doable if you plan your meals correctly.

However, if you're going to calorie count, then you need to really count. No question marks about how much you really had, and no not counting stuff just because it's green. All calories count regardless of what food they come from. Think of your allotment of calories as a budget for the day and plan accordingly. Whatever number you pick, take it seriously and you'll find that you begin to naturally gravitate to healthier, less calorie dense foods so that you get the most possible bang for your caloric buck.

I think it's very difficult to extrapolate from our own, personal circumstances and experiences and assume that what we do will work for everyone.

That being said, it's true the that more you weigh, the more calories you burn doing everything you do, and therefore the more calories you need to keep your body functioning optimally.

Therefore, it is often recommended that people who weigh more eat more calories than those who weigh less. Often 1200 calories is considered the lower limit for smaller people. People who weigh over 200 pounds often find great success eating more calories each day, and dropping calories as they lose. So, the general guidelines do come from somewhere. YMMV, however, and our bodies and circumstances do vary considerably.

All of that being said, given your current weight, it is very likely you can successfully lose weight and have a sustainable diet for you on quite a bit more than 1200 calories a day. If you're interested, try eating 1500 calories a day and see what happens. If you decide not to count your veggies as calories, then know that you ARE eating more than the calories you are counting. You might want to find a way to estimate those calories so you don't get too far off.

1200 Calories seems like a rather low intake to me, but I'm not a professional. I use FitDay and figured that I wanted to lose 2 lbs a week. They gave me a recommendation of eating 2300 calories per day, when, with my lifestyle I burn over 3000. This means I burn like 980 more calories than I eat, doing so every day leads to weight loss of approximately 2lbs a week.

Maybe you could check out FitDay to get an idea of what you burn with your lifestyle and how much to cut back.

Just an idea. But if you're still hungry, you'll probably splurge a lot because you'll want more food.

Doable for you doesn't mean it's doable for everyone. I am starving on 1200 calories a day: blind with rage and frustration style starving. I lose great on 1800 calories, so clearly 1200 calories is a huge deficit for me and my body responds by making me into a walking appetite.

Someone with a slower metabolism, who isn't running such a huge deficit, likely wouldn't be as hungry.

I spent a lot of years failing diet after diet because I thought I should be able to make it on 1200, and blaming myself for being a wimp when I couldn't. Learning that I could lose weight on 1800 changed my life. We are all different.

I didn't say it was doable for everybody. I can't see where I even implied that. In fact my suggestions for her actually point out that they will work at whatever calorie level she chooses. Yes, different levels work for different people, but the universal, in this thread anyway, condemnation of the 1200 calorie choice is just as ridiculous and unsupportive as people who think that everybody needs to be at 1600 a day just because it works for them. My point was that 1200 is a perfectly valid choice despite what so many on this thread, and board, would have you believe.

I'd also like to point out that nowhere in the original post did she say that she was hungry on 1200 a day and yet people are telling her to eat more because they would be hungry at that level. That isn't particularly helpful.

The actual point of my post was that if you are going to calorie count, then calorie count. Take it seriously, no guessing, no not counting certain items. All calories count and it's best to make choices that fill you up, whatever your calorie level.

I'd probably avoid the nuts for a while too, there are lots of other options that give you that feeling of crunch without the calories packed into nuts. Some of the values sound a bit odd to me too, not entirely sure how much 1/2 cup is but 100ml (approx 3 floz) skim milk is only 33 cals according to my actual bottle of skim milk, so it doesn't sound a lot like 1/2 cup would come to 45. Cottage cheese calories are extremely variable, I'd really recommend using custom values to work with cottage cheese, read it off the actual carton and shop around, I've cottage cheese with 97 cals/100g and others with 74/100g. You may be over-estimating your intake.

Maybe there's some adjustment to thought processes to be done here too, different people disagree on strategy, and maybe you didn't mean quite exactly and literally what you wrote, but snacks aren't meant to keep you "full" they are just designed to keep you ticking over a bit so you don't run to the larder and empty everything into your mouth in a giant bingeathon (been there, done that!). If your snacks are simply agitating your appetite - some people find that small meals just switch on their appetite and make their system prepare for a large meal - then you might want to drop them entirely and just have more calories to pack into a meal.

It's a good starting plan to try to go with what works for other people, but you do eventually need to start working with your own body. Fruit makes me hungry so I only eat it when there is plenty of food, say as an appetiser before a meal rather than a dessert or snack. If I eat an apple as a mid-afternoon snack then that's a guarantee I will be watching the clock till it's time for dinner and drinking 20 glasses of water and 8 cups of coffee to try to keep me "full" when actually it's more that fruit totally bounces my blood sugar, it's just that particular type of sugar (fructose) makes my body nuts.

Just re-reading your post I'd reiterate that I think your daily target is too low, not just because its the number 1200 but because if you were previously not counting fruit then 1200 was probably about right, but if you are going to start counting fruit then add in the fruit calories you were previously ignoring and either bump your total up to 1500 or decide to make mini-allowances such as 1200 of meals and 300 of snacks, 1200 of other foods, 300 of fruit, that sort of thing. If you were eating 1200 but not counting fruit then your limit could well be 1500 or more. Try it for several weeks and if you lose nothing at all then you might need to come down again, but it sounds like 1200 is not going to agree with you unless you go back to excluding fruit.

I think we all made the assumption that the OP was hungry on 1200 calories a day because the title of the post was "Am I doing something wrong here?" and it seemed she was finding some aspect of her 1200-calorie day problematic. Could be wrong about what exactly was worrying the OP, but it seemed that hunger was the issue as she described having run low on calories before dinner. Maybe the post was expressing some concern about fitting in all necessary nutrition, though.

With luck, she'll stop by this thread and clarify.

I admit I'm sensitive to posts from people who eat 1200 calories or below because of my own experiences. For me, such a low number meant feeling tired all the time and lasting about three weeks to a month before abandoning the plan. Maybe that makes me a weak-willed ninny--if so, I can live with that epithet. While I'm aware that for many people, 1200 calories (or fewer, depending on the individual) is plenty, I tend to assume that people who post here with "what's going wrong?" posts at that amount are facing the same problems I did with it.

It's human nature to see others' concerns through the prism of our own experiences.

Totally agree that accurate counts are essential to successful calorie counting, though. It's important to eliminate question marks on the daily calorie journal. Best thing I ever did was start making use of my husband's food scale that he bought for bread-making. Who knew that it could be used to make us lose weight just as easily as it helped us gain it?

Thank you everybody so much for your informative posts. It really helped hearing you guys talking about your experience with caloric budgets. Personally, I have been hungry. I have been hungry to the point where after dinner I'll almost have an entire completely additional dinner. I guess it's my own fault for trying to be a perfectionist and putting like what I now feel like was too much of a burden on myself. I've always been an all or nothing kind of girl. At school, it's all straight A's. That kind of thing. I think maybe this is why I've been failing at weight loss since I was a freshman in high school. I managed to lose 40 lbs at one point and keep it off for a while, but a full time college and work schedule and basically just being busy ALL THE TIME has totally massacred my efforts.

I love the idea that I can eat more, especially since I exercise and hope I'm going to lose. It was never a "I'm only eating 1200 calories, trying to get attention type of posts." I've always tried it because I see lots of people who have succeeded with it. However, I think with being overweight and also being diagnosed with hypothyroidism, the fatigue I suffer from is pretty bad as it is. Sometimes I get a mentality where it's something along the lines of: I'm going to eat what I want, but make health conscious decisions such as primarily water, staying away from chips and sweets but I tend to feel like it's not enough to keep me on track. I think a 1600 calorie limit might be enough to actually keep me going. I love the ideas that I got about trying it out for a couple of weeks and checking out my progress. I'm really excited to hopefully be successful this time! Thank you all!

Also, I don't count most green vegetables and etc. because I've read lots of articles that confirm the calories inputted and outputted by the process of eating most of these tends to balance each other out. Sorry I'm not doing it right but I just don't have the patience to sit and count every calorie that goes into my salads and etc :/