A daily 1200 calorie diet is nutritionally adequate for most individuals. It is also the recommended amount of calories for safe and healthy weight loss. The important element is striking the correct balance of macronutrients.
Why 1200 Calories?
Starving your body with too few calories causes your body to slow in its use of calories; hence no weight loss shows up on the scale. Consuming 1200 calories each day has been shown to be nutritious, yet allows for the calorie deficit most people require for losing weight. Standard diet programs recommended by medical professionals and nutritionists use 1200 calories as a foundation for developing meal plans.
There are criteria that alter the number of calories a person needs to consume each day for weight loss. Examples include age, gender, basal metabolic rate, body size, exercise regime and certain medical conditions. A mathematical formula is often used when calculating a person’s individual calorie requirement.
One of the most effective steps that you can ever take towards weight loss is the incorporation of a good diet into your lifestyle. There are so many crash diets out on the market that will leave you craving food, or will leave your body deficient of critical nutrients that are essential for good health and weight loss too. Many of these diets will not actually lead to long term weight loss, and more than a few can actually throw off your body’s natural nutritional equilibrium to the point where you actually gain weight. In reality, lowering your caloric intake to a healthy 1,200 calories per day and eating a healthy variety of food will do much more for you than any of these crash diets ever could.
Cutting Your Intake
The first step to crafting a diet for yourself that will actually lead to having more energy and weight loss is cutting out unnecessary calories. If you keep track of what you are eating for a whole day – or better yet, a week – you will notice all sorts of opportunities for you to cut out extraneous foods and sweets that are not actually playing a constructive part in your diet. It is a simple matter of recognizing when you snack and what you snack on to reduce your caloric intake a significant amount without an adverse effect in the nutrition of your diet. For many people, cutting snacking is enough to decrease their intake to a healthy, efficient 1,200 calories per day.
A Balanced Diet
Even though cutting your snacking will do wonders for your energy and your physique, there is still a lot that you can do to aid the weight loss process. The next logical step in the diet process would be to replace some of the things that you tend to eat with more nutritious alternatives. For example, if you tend to eat a lot of pastas or rice, you should think about replacing the non-nutritious varieties with the healthier whole-grain types, or brown rice. You can use them just like their cousins, but they contain a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and most importantly, fiber that is lost in the refining process. Not only are all of these supplements beneficial to your body and weight loss, the extra fiber in these foods will help fill you up so as to prevent overeating. Fiber also has the capacity to cling onto obstructions in your gastro intestinal tract and remove them as it exits your body.
You should also try to incorporate a good deal of fresh fruits and vegetables into your daily diet. In particular, it will really help if you eat some raw fruits and vegetables from time to time. Cooking will denature a good deal of the helpful proteins and nutrients in these foods, and eating them raw will allow you to introduce a number of essential nutrients into your diet that your body does not see nearly as often as it should. Raw vegetables also contain a number of helpful bacteria that would be killed when you cook your food. Eating your vegetables raw will allow these bacteria to aid in your digestion. Normally introducing bacteria into your digestive system would be a bad thing, but these kinds will actually help your body absorb vitamins, and as they help break down foods in your stomach, they produce oxygen and other compounds that will help your body completely utilize the food you consume.
Undoubtedly you will still want to eat some sweets, even if just for desert. Fresh fruits on their own may not be enough to satisfy your sweet tooth, but you can even turn this propensity to snack into a positive in your diet. Yogurt offers a sweet, healthy alternative to the refined foods that we normally use to satisfy our cravings for sweets. Yogurt is a low calorie, tasty alternative to these sweets, and like fresh fruits and vegetables, yogurt is also full of bacteria that will help you to get the most out of the food that you eat.
Sticking to Your Diet
After you have built yourself a nice, 1,200 calorie diet, it is very important that you stick to it. You will not likely begin seeing any immediate results for a few weeks, but you will start feeling better and more energetic almost immediately. As you do start losing weight, you will want to stick to your new diet. Once your body gets used to a healthy, 1,200 calorie diet, it will start to expect it, and any binges or extreme indulgences will really slow down the weight loss process. You can even help expedite the weight loss process by introducing some exercise into your routine. Once you have lost all the weight you want, you can slowly taper up to a regular 2,000 calorie diet without ill effec
A Simple 1200 Calorie Diet Plan
Dealing with obesity can be very frustrating; as it takes a lot of time to burn calories and attain the perfect figure you always wanted. Most people tend to starve their bodies but what really happens is that the body slows down its use of calories thereby showing no significant weight loss on the scale. According to fitness experts, it is healthy to consume 1200 calories on a daily basis so as to provide the necessary nutrients to the body and allow for the calorie deficit required for fast weight loss.
Most diet plans that are devised by nutritionists and medical professionals are designed to accommodate 1200 calories. However certain factors do affect the number of calories a person needs to eat to attain weight loss. These factors would include gender, age, metabolic rate, fitness levels, exercise regime, medical history, and body size. A person’s individual calorie requirement is calculated keeping all these criteria in mind.
Although 12 calories may sound like a lot of food, that’s not actually true. Calories add up quickly and a balance of macronutrients is necessary so that you feel full and satisfied and do not feel the need to consume more calories. Macronutrients can be provided to the body in the form of fats, carbohydrates, and protein. The macronutrients can be consumed in the following manner:
55% of calories from complex carbohydrates
15% calories from protein
30% calories from fats (only 10% saturated fats)
These percentages would translate into 660 calories from carbohydrates, 180 calories from protein, and 360 calories from fat. However these percentages can be tweaked a bit to fit certain medical conditions.
A classic example of a 1200 calorie diet plan would be as follows:
Breakfast
1 English muffin made from whole wheat
Peanut butter – one tablespoon
Half banana
Mid-morning Snack
One apple and twenty almonds
Lunch
Whole wheat bread – two slices
Turkey breast (low sodium) – 2oz.
Cheese – 1oz.
Mustard – one tablespoon
Tomato
Lettuce
One orange
Mid-afternoon Snack
Low-fat yogurt – 8 oz.
Dinner
Baked, grilled, or broiled chicken breast (skinless) – 3 oz.
1 cup cooked broccoli or any other vegetable
Brown rice – 2/3 c.
Evening Snack
1% milk – 1 cup
Fig cookies (low fat) – 2
There are number of advantages of going on a 1200 calorie diet plan. The biggest advantage of this diet is that addition of wholesome, nutritious foods ensure that cravings for food are minimized. As a result, you can easily avoid episodes of over-eating and keep your weight in control. Since the diet includes the goodness of various food groups, it provides energy to each and every cell of your body. You must drink about 48 ounces of water along with snacks and meals to keep your body well-hydrated.
This diet is not appropriate for pregnant or breast-feeding women whose daily calorie requirement is much higher. It would be a good idea to consult your nutritionist or physician before taking up any diet plan for weight loss. You can speed up the weight loss process by adding an exercise session to your daily routine.
1,200 calories a day? I still think that’s too low especially for someone leading a normal life…..
I agree with All Women Stalker that 1200 calories a day seems like not enough. But as said in the article, changing calorie sources to higher fiber foods will be more filling. Thus, less urge to eat more simple carbs. I think we must drink more water than mentioned. Dehydration reduces the body’s capacity to burn fat.
I agree with both … this is not enough if you have to work daily