Rid Yourself of Winter Weight on a 1200 Calorie Diet

Summer is almost here and I have quietly put on thirteen pounds. At this moment all I can think about is getting back into that stylish, bright, pink bikini I wore last summer. In desperation I’ve embarked on a 1200 calorie diet.

A 1200 calorie diet is for a person who wants to loose weight fast. No doubt about it, you will definitely loose weight--and quickly. But specific portion control is really important. Your meals will include a protein, a fresh vegetable, a fruit and a hideously low amount of fat and sugar. If you are a sugar addict like me and can’t live without your gourmet coffees, this is not the diet for you.

A standard day’s meal might begin with: one cup of bran cereal, one cup skim milk and one banana. For lunch: whole grain bread with two slices of grilled chicken (no more than three ounces), dijon mustard and a tomato slice. For dinner: three ounces of tuna filet, three-quarter cup of green vegetables, one cup lettuce, half-a-cup of cherry tomatoes, half-a-cup carrot, with two teaspoons of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then, for indulgence, a fresh peach for dessert. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? This diet requires patience. But thankfully it does include one or two carefully timed sadly nutritious snacks.

Each morning I wake up and I can’t wait to look at the scale. I am either terribly happy or just short of crest-fallen. Every pound lost or mysteriously gained is documented. Any 1200 calorie diet guru will guide their participant to keep meticulous food diaries. Within those food diaries you’re encouraged to chronicle your loss of pounds.

On day six I wake up feeling refreshed. In fact, I bound out of bed in the mornings now. I have far more energy. Away from my typical winter comfort foods: lattes and mochas in the morning (far too caloric), and those rich fettuccini al fredo pasta lunches, I grudgingly traipse off to munch on a turkey slice on whole grain bread, complete with low fat mayo, a cup of carrots, or red pepper, or celery and for dessert, a lone apple. I am determined.

By week three I am positively dreaming of shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate. I will not lie: a 1200 calorie diet is not fun. It is totally time consuming, obsessive--and it will surely put the cramp on your social life.

But after five weeks people in the office are stopping me to tell me how great I look. Even I notice my skin is glowing--and I’ve gone down two dress sizes.

After seven weeks on a 1200 calorie diet with no soda, no lattes, mochas or shortbread chocolate cookies, I have lost fourteenth pounds! One pound beyond my goal. Yesterday after steamed broccoli, three ounces of grilled halibut, and a small but heavenly, sweet nectarine, I slipped on that stylish, bright, pink bikini. Tomorrow marks the first day of summer--and if I do say so myself, I look amazing.

1200 Calorie Diet Works, But Not for Everyone

A few years ago, I went to visit my doctor for a general check-up and physical. I realized before I went that I had put on a few extra pounds, but was completely caught off guard when I learned that I was 90 pounds heavier than my ideal body weight.

That is when I got the idea to go on a 1200 calorie diet.

My doctor had been on me to lose a few pounds for the last couple of years, but my weight had not become a significant problem yet, and I always promised him that I would try my best to lose.

When he finally came in to see me and looked at my chart, the first thing he said was that it was time for me to get on a balanced diet and start up an exercise regimen. He said that my blood pressure and cholesterol were both elevated, and if I wanted to live to be 60, I needed to start taking off the pounds.

He recommended that I try to limit my calorie intake to about 2,000 a day, and do some sort of aerobic activity, such as walking, swimming or bike riding for at least 20 to 30 minutes a day. He said he did not want me to lose more than one or two pounds a week, because it is not healthy to lose weight too quickly.

I went home that day feeling a little bit down about the prognosis I had just received, and went online to read about some diet plans. I read about a 1200 calorie diet, and how participants were seeing great results from using that plan.

Rather stupidly, and letting my own personal sense of vanity overshadow health concerns, I decided to go against my doctor's advice and try the 1200 calorie diet myself, while increasing the daily exercise routine to between one and one and a half hours.

The first week I lost six pounds, but I was starving most of the time, waking up with rip-roaring headaches and usually in a foul mood.

The second week, I lost 1.6 pounds, which is about what my doctor told me I could expect from following his plan, and I was feeling weak and irritable. I started to question the wisdom of following the 1200 calorie diet.

After further research, I learned that there was nothing wrong with the diet itself. It was the fact that it had been designed for people that were considerably less overweight than I was, and who led a rather sedentary lifestyle, which I did not.

I went back to my doctor's plan, and within a year dropped almost 75 pounds. I feel much healthier now and my blood pressure and cholesterol levels are normal again.

I now know that while the 1200 calorie diet has helped a lot people, it is not the right diet for me - or people like me.

A 1200 Calorie Diet Can Provide Quick Results

One of the hardest things to have when committing to a diet and workout program is patience. We have to remember that we did not gain all of the extra weight we are carrying in two weeks and we are not going to lose it that quickly either. You need some patience and persistence to lose weight, especially if you are older than 40. A 1200 calorie diet may sound like a great idea but in reality it could end up giving you health problems in the long run.

One of the worst things about dieting in general is that people don’t keep the weight off and they end up with the yo-yo effect, rapidly regaining the weight and then some. Medical studies have shown that this repeated gaining and losing of weight is even more dangerous to a person’s health than remaining heavy. People who experience this yo-yo effect repeatedly lose muscle tissue and may even get organ damage. A 1200 calorie diet might get you quick results but you need to be aware of the overall cost to your health.

You also need to remember that a 1200 calorie diet means not only the caloric content of the food that you ingest but also the calories that you burn doing exercise. If you lead the typical sedentary life of the average American but you go to the gym or work out some way, you need to count those as negative calories or calories burned. For example, if you take in 1200 calories each day, but burn 300 calories while walking for thirty minutes you are actually on a 900 calorie diet not a 1200 calorie diet. 900 calories is nowhere near enough for an adult.

This is why most medical and fitness experts recommend a diet of 2000 calories for men, and 1600 for women. It is further not recommended that you lose more than one pound per week. Most of us want to lose at least five pounds per week and we are encouraged by watching shows like “The Biggest Loser” on NBC. But those are really extreme cases with the men weighing as much as 400 pounds in some cases and the women reaching weights of 250 pounds or more. Of course they are going to lose weight faster than someone who is only 20 or 30 pounds overweight.

That is why when they do the weigh-in results on that show they don’t go by pounds lost but by percentage of body weight lost. That is the only real fair way to play the game. In the first week of a 1200 calorie diet you will lose a lot of weight, perhaps as much as five to ten pounds. A lot of this weight will be water weight, especially if you are doing a lot of aerobic exercise where you are sweating a lot. This can be misleading weight loss and many people find that they will hit a plateau around the second or third week and this can be very frustrating. You work out and eat very little and yet you see very low results on the scale. That is another reason that you should not weigh yourself each day, but rather once a week.