“1200 calories a day” is the number I often hear thrown out there by clients or friends who may be unhappy with their bodies and trying to lose weight.
Today we are having a brief chat about why that number is MUCH too low, and why you should be eating significantly more!!
Before we get started — let’s be clear, I don’t “think” or “talk” in calories pretty much ever. I don’t find that generally useful in my personal life or nutrition counseling work. I suppose I could ballpark guess, but I don’t have any exact idea of how many calories I might eat in an average day.
I also don’t care, besides from the fact that I want to be eating enough for my body and activities! What’s more, calorie labels are estimates and are able to be put on products with the assumption that there is up to a 20% margin of error. (All the more reason to not be paranoid if you count calories and find yourself panicking for eating slightly more than your self-prescribed limit…).
If you find yourself trying to eat 1200 calories (or under), I do know that that is almost certainly NOT enough food for your body.
1200 calories is the general estimate of what it takes to sustain doing nothing all day… basically if you or I were to lie in bed all day and move as absolutely little as possible, our bodies would still need about 1200 calories just to breathe, digest, and sustain normal life.
To be clear, this is what our bodies need to function without any exercise, walking around, going up/down stairs, doing household chores, working / expending mental energy, and all the various other things you might do throughout the day!