Does 1200-Calories Diet Plan Work | Consequences And Effects

Does 1200 Calories Diet Plan Work 

The most elusive thing when you're looking at weight loss is the 1200-Calorie Diet Plan if we looked at somebody that wanted to lose weight know that they need to be in a consistent calorie deficit which means for a sustained period they need less energy coming in through what they consume then their body is expending now

We may be led to believe that the bigger that you can make that gap or that deficit between what's coming in and what's going out the quicker your weight will be and ultimately you will get your goal quicker and that's true that will happen however bigger is not always better to add on to that there often this magical number thrown around 1200 calories a day

Which is either seen as something that you should aim for if you want to lose weight or another that is said to be dangerous and that you shouldn't drop below can you lose weight on a 1200-calorie diet absolutely you can and you probably will, however, is it something that I would recommend or is it the most optimal way of losing weight absolutely not and I'm going to run through just a couple of points as

why 1200-calorie diets don't work in the long run you may be thinking that I just told you that a 1200-calorie diet does work and then literally in the same sentence told you that it doesn't work and the reason

What a 1,200-Calorie, High-Fiber Day Weight Loss

Breakfast - Oatmeal + Raspberries

Morning Snack - Carrots and Hummus

Lunch- Fig And Goat Cheese Salad

Afternoon Snack - Plum

Dinner - Chipotle Chicken + Quinoa Burrito Bowl

High Fibre Day Weight Loss

How Many Calories Do You Need (1200-Calories Diet Plan )

why it's not recommended or it's not going to be optimal for weight loss multi-factorial it's not just a physiological thing but it's also psychological if not more psychological than physiological

However, the first thing that I wanted to bring to your attention is something that I think is often forgotten when especially someone's trying to lose weight and that is that your body is constantly burning energy and it requires a certain amount of energy every single day to simply believe even if you just woke up and did absolutely nothing all day you are still burning energy every single minute of every single day just sitting there right now

regardless of what you're doing your body is using energy so you need energy coming in you wouldn't put any fuel in your car and expect it to run so why would we do that our bodies just as waking up in the morning and being alive are using energy but then we're doing lots of stuff on top of that that we don't even factor into it that is also burning energy such as eating and digesting food talking and moving to go and doing exercise whatever it is that we're doing all of this is expending energy too

So the minimum amount of energy or calories that your body requires to simply just wake up and be alive is called your basal metabolic rate now how this number is different for everybody depending on things like your gender your height your weight your body composition and your age as well but to give you a vague idea the average BMR for females is between14 and 1500 calories a day and

That just the calories required for simply being alive that don't even account for the other ways that your body is burning calories throughout the day such as any exercise that you might do or all the non-exercise like fidgeting or maybe cooking or going to the grocery store or walking to work or even the way that your food is digested and used within your body that requires energy to collectively

If we include all those other ways of burning energy we're looking at your total daily energy expenditure and that's usually an average between two thousand and two thousand two hundred for females like mentioned this varies depending on some different factors but the reason I wanted to mention this is that I wanted to highlight just how low that number is in comparison to even just your BMR your body is showing up for you each and every day doing incredible things

But it does require a certain amount of energy to even do the basic functions you can put yourself in a calorie deficit that's a little bit smaller and you'll be able to achieve weight loss perfectly safely and in a relatively easy way but if you drop it 1200 calories there's a significant difference and you're going to be making it so much harder for yourself

Psychological Problem With 1200-Calories Diet Plan

Psychological Problem with 1200-Calorie Diet Plan

Here are some of the reasons why now in my opinion and my experience working with people trying to lose weight and also losing a significant amount of weight myself the most important reason why 1200-calorie diets really just don't work in the long run is the psychological aspect willpower has its limit you may think that you have the strongest willpower in the world but realistically 1200 calories is not a lot of food and

Eventually, you will get to a point where you can't sustain that honestly, you may think that you will be able to and there are probably a few people that will be able to but for the most part it is extremely difficult for you to consistently eat 1200 calories a day and have that much of a deficit firstly in the short term

You're going to have to contend with the fact that you're going to be really quite hungry if you're trying to achieve weight loss chances are that reducing your energy intake to 1200 calories a day is going to be a significant drop from what you're used to eating and while when you're in a calorie deficit

We expect you to notice and experience a certain level of hunger with this much of a drop in calories you're going to experience a lot more hunger and that can be really challenging to overcome there really aren't a huge amount of ways around this your body is going to be sending signals to your brain to tell you to eat

Because expects more food and it needs more food and it's going to be very hard to fight that to put that number in perspective if you split 1200 calories a day into meals and snacks you're looking at 300 calories for breakfast lunch and dinner and then 300 calories for snacks or just 400 calories for breakfast lunch and dinner which means there's going to be absolutely no snacks and that means drinks are included as well

For that reason, if you wanted to still have some of the more calorie-dense and more enjoyable foods in your diet that you're used to which will ultimately help you stay on track in the long term then it's going to be harder to fit that into 300or 400 calories a meal

Whereas if you went the alternative route and completely cut those things out and adopted the higher volume lower-calorie foods you may feel that you're restricting yourself a lot more and it's going to be hard to sustain that over a long period because like I say will power has its limits I say this all the time and I probably will never stop saying it but weight loss is not a short-term solution

It's something that you have to really think about it as a long-term and sustainable lifestyle rather than just something you're going to do and then it's going to be over with try to approach it more like a marathon and less like a sprint if you can eat in a calorie deficit still be able to go out for dinner with your friends eat the foods that you love but also be able to make some choices that are going to optimize your diet

In terms of maybe higher volume lower calorie foods as well you're going to be in a perfect position it's like a chef's kiss that's what you want to achieve and trying to speed it up and race it along not only is it not going to work in the short term but ultimately it's not going to work in the long term

Either have people lost weight on 1200calorie diets yes have they maintained their weight loss, yes but those people are very few and far between and I would hazard a guess that a lot of them would also recommend that it is not the most optimal way of losing weight and that brings us on to point two which is kind of similar and

Is A 1200-Calories Diet Plan Sustainable?

That is that it's just not sustainable it's not a sustainable way of eating it's not an enjoyable way of eating and while you may be able to find ways to make it work in the short term in the long term it is going to be just draining there are physiological reasons as to why a 1200 calorie diet is just not going to be optimal

And I'm going to go into them in a second but just think it is so important to really put yourself in the mind frame of having this day in and day out and not have that much food coming in and try to do everything that you need to do in your life and have energy for it's just a really difficult place to be

It's a choice that you are making you don need to do it so why would we make that choice why wouldn't we just try to make the deficit a little bit smaller and maybe have our expectations a little bit longer term but be able to live our lives in the meantime enjoy the process lost 30 kilos around seven-eight years ago now and I am the first person to admit that this is not a short-term process I am still to this day

Doing things and changing things and adapting things and learning lessons and reflecting back on things that I've worked on in the past but what has really helped me is setting up a sustainable way of eating and building my knowledge over that time and having that expectation of it's going to take a long time and knowing that

There is no end to this process when we think of weight maintenance means fluctuations mean you're going to be gaining weight at certain times you're going to be losing weight there going to be constant fluctuations your motivation is going to change what I can always rely on is the fact that I have built a sustainable lifestyle around that and so all I need to do now is just twist the dials a little bit and

How do I rush that process and maybe do it in a less optimal way through eating fewer calories and being super restrictive I think it would make where am now very very challenging sustainability and consistency really is key and if you can make it sustainable you can make it consistent and ultimately that is what is going to get you to where you want to go that's the same for exercise that's the same for career progression

It's the same for relationships if you can remain consistent with what you're doing that will lead to where you want to go but you need to have sustainability to be able to be consistent okay I've probably said sustainable and consistent a few too many times now so we're gonna move on to the physiological reasons as to why 1200 calories is just too low so the big one that comes to mind when we talk about weight loss and low-calorie diets adaptive thermogenesis

Will Your Metabolism Slow Down/ Enter Starvation Mode?

But you may have heard it referred to as a slow metabolism or metabolism slowing or even starvation mode so what is adaptive thermogenesis well it's actually pretty smart if your body hasn't got the amount of energy coming in that's actually required every single day it's going to put something in place to

Start reducing how much energy it's expending and that is simply per adaptive thermogenesis essentially it's your body's response to less energy coming in than it requires your body is going to reduce how much energy it's expending by maybe making you a little bit slower and you might not realize these things but you just might not be as active as you perhaps had been or when you go to exercise

You're not going to perform optimally because your body's trying to conserve a little bit of energy or maybe it will alter some of the digestion that you're doing so your body is essentially adapting itself to a lower amount of calories coming in as a survival mechanism

I always think this is just so cool when you really think about it it's pretty awesome that your body is just trying to look out for you so if you're a relatively small deficit between 10 and 20 you're not going to notice a significant amount of change from that adaptation however if you make that deficit larger aka consuming 1200calories a day it's going to be noticeable and it's going to affect things like your mood your energy levels your sleep and these things are going to make weight loss in the long term a lot harder

For so many different reasons while we'd expect to see adaptive thermogenesis or a slowdown metabolism if you're indeed losing weight or in a calorie deficit what we want is to really find that sweet spot while we're talking about that sweet spot and having a balance over a long period if you were to eat 1200calories there is a chance that you might start to lack certain nutrients in your diet that you might get if you just had a little bit more variety or more play in how many calories you are consuming a day

Or there is a possibility that you might start to restrict some of the food groups that are more calorie-dense such as let's say dietary fats which are actually essential to have in your diet okay next up is the impact it may have on fitness goals and this can be quite significant because commonly when people embark on a weight loss journey they will tend to also start training or exercising in some way now

I always say that exercise should be something that you enjoy should be some time for you to take out your day to spend on yourself with your own thoughts doing something that makes you happy challenging your body learning new skills whatever it is that floats your boat that should be the reason that you exercise rather than for weight loss

But obviously, they tend to go hand in hand now it's a bit of a catch-22 because if you wanted to lose weight but you also want to work on certain fitness goals you kind of want to be in an optimal position to be able to achieve those fitness goals and that tends to mean getting energy in so that you can optimally perform when you work out again

It comes down to not being too drastic with what you're doing if you're consuming far too little energy to what you need but you're also training and exerting yourself to a really really high extent it's going to just be a recipe for disaster, in the long run, if you can just bring it in a little bit and be able to have a slightly smaller deficit but also be able to train and really to enjoy your workouts and push yourself

It's going to be that perfect sweet spot that you really want to achieve but it's also going to help in terms of having more energy to go and do your workouts or just being generally more active and also reduce the risk of injury and actually seeing progress in your exercise as well and all of these things collectively means that you're going to be able to sustain this for a longer period and

You're also going to enjoy the process a lot more so it's a total win-win the impact of low energy from eating in such a large calorie deficit is not going to only impact exercise performance but it's going to impact so many different factors in your life which in turn are going to impact your ability to lose weight, in the long run, a couple of these

You might notice poorer concentration potentially poorer coordination lack wanting to socialize poorer sleeping habits there are so many and all of these will go into making weight loss harder in the long run really it just comes down to being able to completely avoid making it hard for ourselves weight loss can be enjoyable dare I say it can be exciting it can be interesting you're learning about your body you're trying different things and just seeing what works for you and it doesn't need to be as hard as it's made out to be and that brings us on to the last point that

Will A Low Calories Diet Impact Your Mental Health?

Will A Low Calories Diet Impact Your Mental Health?

I wanted to talk about how is that it can just lead to bad eating habits and overall mental health now this is a big one because I always talk about this balance between physical health and mental health really there isn't one without the other and there is no point in being in peak physical health when your mental health is on the floor and vice versa I've mentioned this in the past that there have been times

Where I have looked and probably been the healthiest and fittest I've ever been but my mental health has been the worst and vice versa where I have probably been the most unhealthy and perhaps overweight that I've ever been and my mental health has been the best it's ever and really it's about trying to find the balance between the two

Hypothetically if you were eating1200 calories a day and you weren't enjoying what you were eating and you were tired all the time and you couldn't train but it was something that you really wanted to do or you enjoyed and that you started to pull away from social occasions because you were either too tired or it started to give you anxiety about how you were going to fit that in your day

Maybe you'd start to think I might restrict a meal here or I might just cut this out here it starts to become more detrimental than beneficial I've always maintained that losing weight didn't make me happy though it would I got there and realized that it didn't and there are so many other things that have fulfilled me and have brought me happiness regardless of weight loss

I always mention that's far more critical of myself now than I was before I lost any weight and maintain that there is so much more to life than the way that your body looks and racing towards reaching a goal because chances are that from my experience and what I see in other people you may get there and realize that it's not what you thought it was going to be what I found is that learned so much about myself on the journey

Here and like I say it's been a long time now but I learned so much about myself you'll learn about your preferences you'll learn about what works for you and that might change in the future but that information is valuable to be able to create the freedom and the happiness and the intuition that you might want in the future so that you don't feel like

This is always just a race to the end in my experience the people that have lost weight and successfully maintained have always taken a slow and steady approach without too many expectations of themselves in a short time frame

I think this is a critical good thing take time and what feels like forever right now will just be a mere memory in the future the other common thing that is with successful weight loss is just them finding and working through what works for them and then from there just adjusting the dials depending on what happens in their life

It really is different for everybody and it should be treated like that which is why just saying a blanket 1200 calories a day just seems crazy really hope this video has helped in some way to clear up some of the noise that you might have heard about 1200calorie diets you want more videos on nutrition and calorie deficits and all that sort of stuff I'll put some down below that you can have a look at otherwise I will let you guys get on with your day don't be mean to yourselves