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The 1200 Calorie Diet – Is It Right For You?

Are you trying to lose weight and do it fast? Are you following some extreme diets? Maybe the 1200 calorie diet could be for you.

Fat cannot be lost fast – meaning if you have lived an unhealthy life for years and gain all those extra pounds, you cannot just expect to lose that extra weight in a month or even less! If anyone tells you that is possible, he or she either doesn’t know what he or she is talking about, or he or she is trying to sell you something. Sadly, fat melts away really slow.

1200 Calorie Diet – First Things First

First things first, if you want to lose weight, you should either eat less or exercise more. The best is of course to mix both. If you eat less than you burn throughout the day you will lose weight (burn fat). But you should realize that lowering the calorie intake too much is not the right approach. There should be a caloric deficit, but stay within limits. The best practice is to cut off about 20 percent of your maintenance calorie intake. Maintenance calorie intake is the intake at which you will neither lose or gain weight.

There are some extreme diets available, like 1200 calorie diet, but you should follow such a diet only if you know exactly what you are doing.

The truth is that extreme diets can do you more harm than good. Why? Because cutting yourself off too much is not the right way. If your daily calorie consumption for example is 2000 calories, the lowest you can go with your diet is about 1600 calories per day. That is 20 percent under your maintenance calorie intake. A 1200 calorie diet is too extreme for you. A 1200 calorie diet is suitable for women, whose daily maintenance calorie intake is about 1500 calories.

There is one more thing. If you combine exercising and dieting you must also subtract the calories you have burnt during your exercise and so your diet should not be too extreme. For example: your daily maintenance calorie intake is 2000 calories (you can calculate your required calorie intake by using a BMR calculator). You ate 2000 calories in 5 meals. If you exercised today for half an hour (jogging) than that means about 300-500 calories already burnt. You are now at 1500 calories for today which is already enough for efficient weight loss.

If you follow a 1200 calorie diet you would be in a larger deficit than 20 percent, which is not healthy.

So the conclusion is this, only follow an extreme diet like 1200 calorie diet, if you know what you are doing. Consult a professional, if unsure.

 

Danny Loeb.

ListedFit.com