Who came up with the 1200 calorie diet? Who came up with that magic number that
almost I would say 80% of the female personal training clients I have worked with have told
me that's how many calories you're eating a day because they want to lose weight and blast body
fat and look lean and look athletic? Who came up with that number? I don't understand where
it came from and why society is telling women that they're only allowed to eat 1200 calories a day.
If this is you, no judgment here. I am making this video to help you. This might be one of the most
controversial videos I put on my channel, but I am sick of it and I want to help you
live a healthier, more enjoyable life because food is amazing and you should be able to eat food
to fuel your body and never feel guilty about it. Watch this video right to the end. I'm going to
tell you the four reasons why your 1200 calorie diet isn't working and why you're not reaching
your goals. And I'm going to break down for you what you can do today and what
you can start right now to get rid of that 1200 calorie diet, throw your scale out the
window and start seeing real fat loss results. Okay, before I take a deep dive into this topic,
if you're new here, make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit that bell to be notified
for new videos coming every single week. Realistic, healthy, sustainable fat loss tips
to not only help you blast body fat, but keep it off, as well as full follow along workouts
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Leave your comments below. I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on a 1200 calorie diet.
Okay, so maybe you clicked on this video because either you have been eating in a 1200 calorie
diet for a really long time and you haven't seen sustainable results, or you're thinking
about starting a 1200 calorie diet. In that case, I'm happy you found this video. I just truly want
to help. So I'm going to give you my best tips that I can to help you get rid of food guilt,
teach you that you can actually eat and enjoy food and enjoy life and still lose body fat,
that you don't have to starve yourself to lose weight. I've been a personal trainer for 15
years. I've worked with professional athletes, highly motivated, successful business people,
as well as just everyday people looking to lose body fat. And I will say the most
common thing I hear when I ask people how many calories they're eating a day is 1200 calories.
And every time when I tell people that they're allowed to eat more and that they are allowed to
eat carbs and they can still lose weight, there is always a, "Oh, I can eat more than 1200 calories?
I don't know. I don't trust it because the internet tells me that I have to eat 1200 calories
and that's the only way I can lose weight." I have been doing this a very long time and I have also
been doing this long enough to see that when people finally listen to me and fuel their
bodies with the right amount of food and the right foods, they blast body fat and I'm able to see
those results. So I'm not only just throwing this on the internet because I learned this yesterday.
I am speaking from experience. I have worked with hundreds of clients to help them build
a healthy relationship with food. So if you're currently someone who
doesn't have a healthy relationship with food, you've always been on the next bandwagon diet,
from keto to this, to intermittent fasting, to the no-carb diet, to the high protein diet, to the
Bernstein's diet. If you're someone who's just hopping from one diet to the next but you've never
actually found something that you lose weight, all of these diets will work to lose weight,
but you actually keep it off long-term and you enjoy life while doing so.
Okay, it's time to stop beating yourself up and let's get into the four reasons why your
1,200-calorie diet isn't working. One, you're possibly eating less than your basal metabolic
rate. What is the basal metabolic rate? It's the amount of calories your body needs if you
literally laid in bed all day and did nothing. So everybody's basal metabolic rate is different.
Mine is about 1,400 or 1,500 calories. So meaning if I laid in bed all day and did nothing, I still
need 1,500 calories to function in life, to fuel my lungs, to feed my muscles. The more muscle mass
you have, the taller you are, the bigger your size, all of these things come into play when
you're calculating your basal metabolic rate. If you want to learn more about basal metabolic
rate, I have this video right here teaching you all about how to calculate your basal metabolic
rate and your total daily energy expenditure, which is basically your basal metabolic rate
plus any exercise or movement or walking you do. And these are the calories you need to just
literally sustain life. So if you're eating less than this basal metabolic rate,
naturally your body will actually slow down your metabolism to meet the needs.
Now, when I say... Anybody who follows me on social media, I even have my four-year-old saying
it now, food is fuel. So if you are not fuelling your body with the minimum, the bare minimum,
the basal metabolic rate minimum, foods that you need just to function in life,
you're going to feel tired. You're going to not have any energy to exercise. You're going to have
more cravings. You're not going to sleep well. All of these things are going to come into play
if you're on a fat loss journey. So if you are eating under, so for example, my basal metabolic
rate is about 1,450 calories. Let's just say it's there. So if I am eating say 1200 calories a day,
my body is going to naturally just decrease my metabolism over time.
So I'm consistently eating 1200 calories a day, 1200 calories a day, my body's going to adapt
to know that I'm only getting this much fuel. I need to slow some things down. Energy levels are
going down. My metabolism is going to naturally slow down. So meaning I'm actually burning less
calories in a day, meaning if I'm looking to lose body fat or lose weight, we want our metabolism
up here. We want to burn more calories. We want to build muscle to burn more calories and increase
our basal metabolic rate. If I'm not eating enough, my body is going to naturally adapt.
Some call it starvation mode. You might have heard this. Whether it's a myth or not, in the end,
logically when you think about it, it is your body is not getting enough fuel, so it's naturally
going to decrease its needs for that fuel. So again, you are doing your body a disservice
if you're not fueling it at least with the bare minimum of your basal metabolic rate. So again,
click that link below, check out the video about basal metabolic rate and make sure that
you are eating at least your basal metabolic rate. Okay, reason number two why your 1200 calorie diet
is not working. It's not sustainable long-term. Yes, maybe you can go, "It's January 1st. It's New
Year's Day. I'm going to go hard." And maybe you can keep it up for a week or two weeks.
1200 calories a day, you can stick to it and go hard and say, "I'm on a diet. I'm going to lose
all this weight." But I have seen over and over and over with so many clients and so many people I
know. And I never knock anyone's motivation. I am the most supportive person when it comes to people
wanting to lose weight, but I also know because I've seen it firsthand by so many of my clients or
people I know, they have stayed in that restricted calorie diet where you're not allowed cookies,
you can't have ice cream, you can't have alcohol. You can't have anything but chicken,
broccoli, sweet potatoes, water. And that is it. Black coffee, all of these things.
You can only do that for so long. Eventually there's going to be a birthday party. Eventually
there's going to be a night out with the girls. Eventually there's going to be this. Like this
is the fun part of life. Like you should be allowed to enjoy that fun part of life.
You should be able to have a burger and a fries once in a while. You should be able
to go with your kids to the doughnut store on a Saturday and sit down and have a donut with your
kids and not say, "I'm on a diet. I can't eat this." It's all about healthy balance.
So the reason your 1200 calorie diet is not working is because you're not staying on
it. So possibly you're going into like a binge cycle. So one week you're on it, you're eating
your 1,200 calories. You're going and you're like, "Yes." Then Saturday comes and you're like, "Well,
hey, there's McDonald's. I'm going to eat a burger and fries." And then the girls want to go out for
drinks and you go out for drinks and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then Sunday you feel horrible
because you cheated on your diet, but you also had a lot of fun. So that should be allowed. But then
you feel bad about yourself. So then you throw in the towel. And then Monday comes and you're like,
"Okay, well, I'm going to get back on it now." Monday, you last till Wednesday,
and then someone brings a donut into the office and you eat a donut and then you're like, "Well,
I blew it again." So it's not sustainable long-term and that's why it's not working.
Okay, reason number three why your 1,200-calorie diet is not working,
you are over-exercising. There's a possibility that if you're only eating 1,200 calories a day,
again, we talked about that basal metabolic rate and then your total daily energy expenditure. So
again, let's use me as an example. If 1,450 calories is my basal metabolic rate
and then I go for a walk with my kids and I work out, that's probably an extra about 500
calories. So let's put me at 2,000 calories now as my total daily energy expenditure.
If you are only eating 1,200 calories a day and you're exercising or you're doing all this cardio,
you're running on the treadmill for an hour, or you're staying at the gym on the elliptical for
two hours trying to burn more calories to lose weight, you are actually, again, that
1,200 calories and then you're dropping another. So you're not giving your body any fuel and you're
over-exercising. This is not sustainable. You will possibly be losing muscle mass,
which again, decreases your basal metabolic rate and how many calories you're burning
just doing nothing. This is not what we want. We want our basal metabolic rate up. And again,
you are not fueling your body enough to put you through these workouts and keep up with that
long-term. Exercise should be something you enjoy. It should be something that fits into your
lifestyle. You shouldn't have to fit your life into your workouts. If you're currently working
out three hours a day or doing two-a-days, is that sustainable long-term? Short-term, if you have a
goal or you have something that you're working towards, a wedding, a vacation or something,
that's fine. That's a whole different story. I'm talking about overall general weight loss
or fat loss. You do not need to exercise three hours a day in order to see results.
Okay, last and final reason why your 1,200-calorie diet isn't working, you're relying too much on
your willpower. So there is no proper plan in place. You are only relying on your willpower.
I can never eat cookies. I can never have sugar. I can never have alcohol. I can never do this.
It's an all or nothing, which that's not what life is about. If you're relying on your willpower
every time to say no to that donut or to say no to that cookie, how long can you go
consistently saying no? Eventually you're going to have a cookie. This is real life and this is
what it's all about. It should be enjoyed and it shouldn't be something
that you feel like you can never have food. Food is fuel, but also food is part of life.
It's part of Christmas dinner, it's Thanksgiving dinner. It's all of these things that you
can still enjoy this in moderation. If you're relying on your willpower alone, your willpower
is not strong enough because eventually you're just hungry. If you're not eating enough food,
your energy levels are low. You're going to feel tired because you're not fueling your body
properly. You're restricting your body so much. Those cravings are going to increase. You're not
sleeping properly. Your energy levels are low. All of these things come into play. So again,
reason number four is you're relying too much on your willpower and there's no plan in place.
So there you go. Four reasons... I can give you probably 20 more, but those are my top
four reasons as to why your 1,200-calorie diet is not working and not helping you lose weight and
keep it off long-term. If you're watching this and you're like, "Well, I ate 1,200 calories a day for
four weeks and I lost 20 pounds," that's amazing. And I'm not saying it's not possible. What I'm
saying is that the majority of people will be able to lose weight on a 1,200-calorie diet,
but the question is, can you keep it off? Can you stay on that diet for a long, long, long time
in a healthy way and keep it off? What we want to avoid is the weight going up and going down
and then, "Oh, I have a vacation. I have to lose weight again." Or, "Oh, I have a wedding
coming up. I have to lose weight." Instead of just hitting your healthy weight, be happy and
maintain that for a long time forever. It goes up five, it goes down five,
it goes up two, it goes down two. That's fine because again, life happens, vacations happen,
all of these things, but most importantly is building a healthy relationship with food,
getting rid of food guilt, understanding that food is fuel and learning what type of foods
you can eat to fuel your body, not think of food as calories alone and that you can't eat
those foods because they're loaded with calories. So I hope this was helpful today. And I am going
to close this video with one tip as to how you can get off the diet train is calorie deficit. So I've
made a video how to calculate your calorie deficit for weight loss right here. So you can check it.
I'll leave a link below where you can watch that video. I've also got a free calorie deficit guide,
which I'll link below as well, you can download that, that's going to show you how many calories
you can eat and still lose body fat. So go check that out if you're looking for a healthier,
sustainable weight loss plan that is eating more than 1,200 calories and still lets you enjoy life.
So there's my rant over. I really hope this video was helpful. Again, my goal is just to
try and reach as many people as I can to get off of the diet train and learn how to properly fuel
their bodies. And if that was you, and if I got [inaudible 00:13:34] each day, I'm very happy.
Let me know in the comments. Again, leave any questions below. Give this video a like if you
found it helpful. And of course, subscribe to my channel. And I'll see you guys next week.