why eating 1200 calories to lose weight is bad advice
In this instructional video, Eric Roberts debunks the popular recommendation to eat 1,200 calories per day for fat loss. He traces the origin of the 1,200‑calorie guideline to Lulu Hunt Peters’ WWI‑era diet book, explaining how cultural, historical, and marketing forces cemented it in public consciousness. Roberts then outlines six evidence‑based reasons the diet fails long‑term: (1) rapid early weight loss is mostly water and glycogen, not fat; (2) severe restriction creates a “weekend rubber‑band” effect where binge eating on weekends erases progress; (3) chronic low‑calorie intake triggers metabolic adaptation, lowering daily energy expenditure; (4) weight loss without adequate protein leads to muscle loss, resulting in a “skinny‑fat” physique and slower metabolism; (5) a 1,200‑calorie plan cannot provide sufficient protein, vitamins, and minerals, risking bone density loss and overall health; (6) the unsustainable habit pattern undermines psychological confidence and leads to weight‑cycling. He supports these points with analogies (outdated map, furnace, carry‑on bag) and a simple weekly‑calorie math showing that a modestly higher daily intake (e.g., 1,700 kcal) actually creates a larger weekly deficit than a strict 1,200 kcal plan that collapses on weekends. Roberts acknowledges a narrow scenario where 1,200 kcal might be appropriate (very short, low‑activity women) and recommends alternative, sustainable strategies: increase daily steps, prioritize protein, build muscle, and incorporate Zone 2 cardio to raise maintenance calories while still losing fat. Throughout, he references his experience coaching over 25,000 clients and promotes his 8‑week personalized fat‑loss challenge as a way to implement these principles.
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If you think you need to eat 1,200 calories to lose fat, you've been lied to. And I'm going to tell you where this 1,200-calorie diet even came from and the science-backed reasons why it won't work long-term, and you'll actually end up losing more fat by eating more calories. And if the science isn't enough for you, myself and my coaching team have coached over 25,000 clients with their fat loss over the last 10 years, and the 1,200-calorie diet is the number one diet that I have seen fail the most. So by the end of this video, I promise you, you'll learn why the 1,200-calorie diet became popular, the 6 reasons it's wrong for long-term progress, and the actual math on why eating more will help you lose more body fat. And so let's dive right into it. The first part, where did 1,200 calories come from? Maybe somebody thinks it's the MyFitnessPal app because it does do this. If you say, especially if you're a woman, you type in anything, it gives you 1,200 calories apparently. You hear people, social media influencers saying it on the internet. It actually started way back During World War I, a doctor named Lulu Hunt Peters put out a book that was called Diet and Health with Key to the Calories. And she was, I believe, one of, if not the first woman in America to, I believe, earn a medical degree. And her newspaper column at the time ran in like hundreds of newspapers, and she herself had lost a about 70 pounds. So it was kind of a verified source that women trusted. And then I think here's— to me, here's the wild part. Nobody even really knew what a calorie— nobody knew what a calorie was back then. It was just like a term for scientists or chemists to, you know, use in their lab. And I think in the book, she actually had to teach people how to even like say the word calorie. And she, she kind of coined, don't think about a slice of bread, start thinking 100 calories of bread. And then she gave them a number to stay under, which was 1,200 calories a day. And so why did this take off? Well, at the time, it was a first-ever diet book that became a bestseller That was backed by a doctor and a doctor who had lost weight. So there was a lot of credibility around this. So for example, when I open and I say, hey, myself and my team, we've coached over 25,000 clients, at the very least you're probably thinking, well, this guy somewhat maybe knows what he's doing or he's been doing it a long time. There's a certain level of credibility. And then number 2, the timing of this during World War I, the food shortages. I believe she also framed kind of like eating less and being calorie conscious as almost like a patriotic duty on the home front because of the food shortage of the war. And then number 3 was during this time, fashion was kind of flipping and by no means am I a fashion expert. Um, but some of the research I was doing, corsets and curves, which I didn't know what the hell a corset was, but corset and curves were out. And then what was coming in was like the skinny look. And so now this number also had a whole kind of cultural movement attached to it. And this is how it gained a lot of steam. Then We can obviously kind of talk about some of like the diet culture and so on and so forth. And I think one of many reasons why this number stuck with a lot of people, it was easy just to say and kind of replicate. And people liked that. People like easy, replicatable, take out the guesswork things. The issue was there was just obvious issues with this, which we'll talk about in a second. But then people started running with it, whether it be government low-calorie guides or people telling other people. Obviously, we have social media now, so things spread much faster, but it's the same way even if there wasn't social media. People tell other people, people read the book, people recommend the book to other people. These things just start to kind of go out there. And so I want to make very clear, it's not that you know, a bunch of researchers came together and like there was a bunch of studies and everybody agreed this is kind of where we should be. It really was a mixture of kind of a singular book, a singular ideology, and then a mixture of just timing, culture, and that just kind of stuck moving forward. And the analogy I wrote down here was it's— that would be like you now driving around your town with a map or with a GPS from 1918. It's like some of those roads might still be there, but the highway's not on it. All these new neighborhoods aren't on it. The, the new grocery store isn't on it. And then you're sitting there trying to navigate this road you're trying to drive on with a map that was 100-plus years old. It just doesn't make any sense, and it's very outdated. And on top of that, the number wasn't calculated for you. This was just kind of like a general guideline, especially for women during that time, a very kind of sedentary, low, like famine food diet. So why would we be trying to still do that in 2026 as I'm recording this? That is just not the case. So that's where it came from. And then the next part I wanna talk about is why does it feel like this work? And by the way, if you do want your calories calculated specifically and personally for you and your body, I have a free calorie calculator. You can click the link in the description of this video, click the link in the description of the podcast below. And you'll be able to access that totally free calorie calculator. It is the same calorie calculator that I use with our online coaching clients. Just make sure when you use it, set your activity level to moderate. Even if you're not moderate, get to moderate. That's the whole point, because otherwise it could end up too low. But you can click the link to access that. Now, why does it feel like 1,200 calories Work? Well, if you stick with it, which is a big asterisk next to this if, but let's assume that you stick with 1,200 calories. When you eat this, a couple of things happen in your body. Not just are you putting yourself in a big aggressive calorie deficit, which would lead to quote unquote more and faster fat burning. But then on top of that, you're also having less food in your stomach. You're having— which would make your person weigh— your human being, your person— it would make you weigh less on the scale. It would also mean you can only fit but so many carbohydrates into a 1,200-calorie diet. So it's also going to lower your glycogen stores. And glycogen is just energy that sits inside of your muscles. And the less glycogen you have, the less water weight you store. Not like a bloating stomach water weight. Again, glycogen sits in your muscles. So if you've ever maybe watched somebody do like a physique competition or a bodybuilding show, A couple of days before the actual show, they will eat a ton of carbohydrates. Why? It fills up their muscles. It makes their muscles look more full. But with that, there also comes some added scale weight. So if you cut that out, your scale will drop really fast. So all these reasons, it feels like, yeah, well, the only way I can see progress is by eating 1,200 calories. I've heard that a million times from people who have signed up for coaching with us. And you think that is the case because when you go to 1,200 calories, your scale drops so quickly. But just because your scale drops quickly does not mean that is a good thing, especially for long-term sustainable fat loss progress. And you can't drop 5 pounds of fat in a week. That's impossible. Well, I guess not impossible, but you literally eat almost like zero calories per week. So you're dropping a lot of water weight. You're dropping food in your stomach, and oh guess what? If God forbid you have a day where you go out to eat, you have a day where you eat a bit more calories, eat a bit more carbs. What does the scale do? It spikes up. So now you think you gained a bunch of fat, and I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. But this is why people think 1,200 calories works. It doesn't get you results. It gets you a preview. Of those results, and then it takes it back when you're not able to no longer eat 1,200 calories per day. And that leads us into the first reason why 1,200 calories is not going to work for you, and that's kind of what I call the weekend rubber band, the weekend snapback. So the problem is, to hit 1,200 calories, you typically have to cut out A lot of your favorite foods. You have to cut out a lot of bread, pasta, uh, over carbohydrates. You have to cut out a lot of the stuff you might like to put in your coffee. You can't really go out to eat. If you go out to eat, that's 1,000 calories just in that meal alone. So there's no wine, there's no alcohol, there's— every meal just feels like prison, basically. And in my opinion, that's not a plan. That's like you being in prison, being in like a hostage situation. And so what happens is a few things. Physically, physiologically, your hunger hormones will spike so much because the bigger of a calorie deficit that you create, the more out of whack your hunger hormones get. And mentally, the more restricted you are, the more it leads you to want to binge eat and overeat and feel like you're on a diet, feel like you can't have these certain foods. And that's when the cravings get even louder. Your hunger starts to spike. And so on Monday, You know, maybe you start off really strong and you're trying to eat 1,200 calories, but then by Wednesday, you're irritable, you're hungry, you're feeling over-restricted. Friday rolls around, Saturday rolls around, Sunday rolls around, and all you are doing is thinking about food. All you're doing is thinking about how hungry you are, how much you can't have the certain foods. And then what happens? The weekends come around, you got a birthday, you got a dinner out, You want to have an appetizer, a couple glasses of wine, God forbid. Maybe you want to go to a Mexican restaurant, have some of the chips, but you're so restricted, you're not allowed to do that. But what ends up happening? You and I both know your body is going to get what it wants. It's going to have a snapback, just like a rubber band. You pull the rubber band back and eventually you let it go and it flings forward. And so you end up eating 3,000 calories on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then what does the scale do? Which, by the way, that's very easy to do, especially if you are going out to eat, especially if you are having foods that are high in calories that you're not allowing yourself to have during the week. Very easy. And then the guilt on that Sunday night, Monday morning, you wake up, your scale's up 4, 5, 6 pounds. And then you go right back to 1,200 calories to try to make up for it because you think that's what you should be doing. Does any of this sound familiar? I'm pretty sure it does. And let me be very clear, that is not a character flaw. That's not a willpower problem, a discipline problem. This is you just not having A proper, sustainable, realistic plan. Of course you're not gonna stick to 1,200 calories from a physiological perspective with your hunger hormones and from a psychological perspective of the amount of restriction that it takes to do that long-term. And then somebody might be sitting here listening and be like, well, I, I've been doing it for a month. I've been doing it for 2 months. I don't really know how to say this without sounding Like an asshole. But what I will say is, I guess more or less, you kind of just have to trust me on this. And I've done over 1,000 podcast episodes, been posting on social media for 6 years. I've written articles. I've coached over 25,000 clients in 10 years of doing this by now. I understand that maybe you think you can keep this up, but what is going to eventually happen is you're gonna have the snapback. You're gonna have the rubber band effect where even if you can do 1,200 calories for 3 months or 6 months, eventually— I've just seen it. I've coached thousands of people, tens of thousands. You're gonna end up Feeling so restricted that you overeat, whether it's every weekend or what might happen, which I've also seen before. People will lose 60, 70, 80, 100 pounds eating a very low-calorie diet. But then what happens? 6 months later, they gain all of that weight back and then some. I just— I've seen it. So you gotta trust me on this one. It's not gonna be sustainable long-term. And even if it is sustainable long-term, which it's not, the next reason is also why you should not be eating 1,200 calories per day. And it's an idea I like to refer to as your body is turning down your furnace. It's turning down your heat. It's turning down your metabolism. So your metabolism, which by the way, most people on the internet have no clue. What they're even talking about when they mention their metabolism. In a very simple term, your metabolism just means how many calories your body is burning on a daily basis to keep you alive. And with all the other extra stuff that you give it, this extra stuff is food that you're eating, exercise that you're doing, movement that you are doing. That's it. That is what your metabolism is. And it's not fixed. Your metabolism is adaptive. So if you eat way too little for long enough, your body will adapt. Because if we take this back to before World War I or before really anything, our bodies needed to be able to survive. It is. We, we, not always lived this incredibly easy, cush life that we live right now, where you can literally go to your phone, order food, and it's at your house within 30 minutes. That is insane. You don't have to do anything. People watching, I just knocked off my mic cover here. We used to have to like go hunt for food and survive not having food for a couple of days, survive Being in the elements, getting chased by fucking lions. Like, this sounds dumb, but it's true. And so our bodies learned how to adapt to that. So if you're eating very little calories for a long period of time, your body will adapt. You will start to move less without noticing. You start to fidget less. Your body gets colder. Your workouts start to suck. Your body ends up burning fewer calories doing the exact same things you were doing day to day. So again, the 1,200 calories may work in a week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks, but what happens at week 6? What happens at week 8? What happens at week 24? What are we going to do when our metabolism starts to slow down and negatively adapt? Are we gonna go to 1,000 calories? Are we gonna go to 900 calories? I hope to God your answer is no. And it puts you in a tough place because now there's nowhere to go. Like, there's nowhere to adjust. So what if you hit a plateau? What, what are you gonna do? Like, you're just gonna— or you could add in hours and hours of more cardio with the time you don't already have. So it's just not smart from a plan perspective, and it's also not smart from a metabolism perspective. And the analogy I wrote down here was your body is a house in the winter. Calories are the heating bill. If you cut the bill in half and the house doesn't magically stay warm because the furnace turns itself down, now every room is cold and like you're walking around in a blanket all day. That blanket is you at 3 PM with no energy, skipping the gym, always frustrated, snapping at your kids. It's not that your body broke, it's just running on a very low setting because it's all you gave it and you kind of just bottomed out your plan. So that's reason number 2 why 1,200 calories is not smart to do long-term, which brings me to the next reason. Weight loss is not fat loss. So here's the question: when a new client joins our coaching program, which by the way, if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, this this sounds like me. Is Eric describing me? Yeah, I probably am because we've worked with over 25,000 clients, and what we have is our eight-week fat loss challenge. Where we build you a personalized calorie goal, nutrition plan, workout plan that is fully made for you and your lifestyle and your routine and your body. But also you get paired up with a dedicated one-on-one coach who is checking in all throughout the week, holding you accountable, looking over your food logs, making adjustments on a weekly basis so you never plateau. So if you think that can help you not only get a plan set up, but also actually stay— excuse me, stay consistent with your journey, click the link in the description of this video below and you can learn more about our 8-week fat loss challenge. You can watch a quick video on it, you can apply, and if it looks like you qualify and are a good fit, you'll book a call with me. We'll chat a bit more and get you started up. Now the question, if you are to join, you will see this. We ask all of our clients, would you rather lose weight really quickly in an unsustainable manner, or would you rather lose weight slower but in a more sustainable manner? And the other question we ask is, do you wanna lose weight or do you wanna look good naked? Do you really care about what the number on the scale says? Or do you want to look a certain way? Because those are two different goals with two different plan plans. Everybody thinks that you want to lose weight. What really everybody wants is you want to look good naked. And yeah, you might think that yeah, I want to just weigh 150. It's all I want in life. Again, you just got to trust me on this. I can't tell you how many people have gotten to 150, 130 pounds. They get there and they're like, "What is this? I don't look anything like the way I want to look." So you end up as skinny fat. You don't even like that. So you don't even care about the number on the scale anymore. Again, you got to trust me. You want that toned, lean, defined look that comes from more muscle with less fat. At 1,200 calories, your body is not going to have the nutrients that it needs, the protein that it needs, the fuel, the energy, the calories that it needs to build. And worst case, it will eat away at the muscle you already have for energy. Because remember, what— how do you lose fat in a calorie deficit? Well, when you're eating less calories than what your body burns, your body goes to stored fat to burn for energy. What happens if there's such a big calorie deficit? This means your body is needing to pull from multiple places at once to get the energy that it needs. What is that place? Muscle. Because muscle is actually the most calorie-conscious tissue that you have. It requires more calories burned to keep muscle than it does fat. So your body is smart. It adapts. It says, well, we are in a 1,000, a 1,500 calorie deficit per day. We need to make sure we stay alive, so we're going to take some of this muscle that is expensive, we're going to get rid of it so we aren't in as big of a calorie deficit per day, and we can adjust and adapt to make sure we can hit our needs. So it gets rid of your muscle. That slows down your metabolism as well. And so yeah, the scale might be going down, but you end up as a smaller, softer, Skinny fat, slower metabolism, weaker version of yourself. And like, is that really what you want? Is that like the end goal? I sure hope not, 'cause that sounds terrible. And so removing yourself from— if we go back to the beginning of the podcast talking about the cultural movement of why 1,200 calories even became popular, because people were like going for this skinny look in fashion. Removing yourself from that world and saying, do I want to be skinny and weak and frail and soft, or do I want to be lean and do I want to be strong and do I want to have muscle definition? Do I want to be able to just— outside of the aesthetics of how I look, do I want to be able to perform well? Do I want to be able to pick things up? And do I want to be able to have the strength that I need to just live a high-quality life? Because 1,200 calories is not going to get you there. I'm sorry, it is not. So something to consider. That's reason number 3. Reason number 4, kind of what I coined the carry-on bag. So the problem is it's not just calories that your body will be short on if you eat 1,200 calories. It's also everything inside of Those calories. So first and foremost, protein. To keep muscle or build muscle while losing fat, you need a good amount of protein every day. Trying to fit 120, 130 grams of protein into 1,200 calories, is it doable? Sure. But all you're going to be doing is eating chicken breast and egg whites and protein shakes every single meal forever because nothing else is going to fit. You're not going to be able to fit in other foods Within your calorie limit while still hitting your protein goal. So it makes it much harder. I can't tell you how many people have come to us and signed up for our 8-week fat loss challenge, and we asked them kind of what they've been doing with their diet before, and they say, man, it's just so hard to hit my protein goal. And people think it's 'cause they're not eating the right high protein foods, but we're like, well, yeah, you're trying to eat 1,300 calories and you're eating— 2 meals a day, no wonder you can't hit your protein goal. And also, maybe your protein goal is too high. It's a different conversation for a different day, but there's a reason that hitting your protein goal is hard, but it can be fixed. One of them is not eating 1,200 calories. And the second part is something I don't hear a lot of people talk about, which is the stuff inside of the calories that can actually determine your health and energy and mood and all these other things beyond just fat loss, which is— How much calcium are you getting? How— excuse me, how much potassium are you getting? How much magnesium? How much sodium? Vitamin A, E, K? Your body needs more than just protein and calories to be as healthy as you can be. Again, it's one thing to focus on and think about fat loss and muscle building, but there's other things that have to happen inside of your body for your overall health. And at 1,200 calories, it's very hard to physically eat enough food to get the amount of nutrients that you need to have a healthy body. And now, of course, you can supplement, and I do recommend, even if you are eating— like, I consider myself eating a very nutrient-dense diet, but I still supplement with extra supplementation. But I'm trying to get as much as I can through food. And I think you should be doing the same thing. And so where that leads is, especially for, I would say, women who are 35 to 55, men too, but especially women, this will lead you to bone density loss, which means your bones get thinner and weaker and higher risk of injury, especially as you age. This leads to sarcopenia, which is a fancy term for muscle loss as you age. And those 2 things put together are what lead you to not only look frail at 65 years old, but literally be frail where if you fall, you might break a hip, you might break a bone, you might have to be in the hospital for an extended period of time, all because you've been continuing to try to eat 1,200 calories when you're 37, 42, 45 years old. The analogy I wrote down was like 1,200 calories a day is a carry-on bag, but an 1,800-calorie day is like a full suitcase. You're trying to pack a week's worth of clothes into a carry-on. Protein will take up half the bag on its own. And now you're trying to stuff in the calcium, the potassium, the magnesium, all the vitamins, the minerals, the nutrients. So like, something's going to get left at home. Something is not going to be able to go along for the ride. And you really don't notice what you left behind until you're standing there without it. So you're not just undereating calories, you're undereating Your bones, your minerals, your muscle mass, and all those things are going to come back to bite you if you're— if they are not set up properly as you age. Now, reason number 5 for why 1,200 calories is not the best thing long-term, and this is— I can't tell you how many times I've heard this and then seen this play out. A lot of people think, Eric, I'm gonna be honest with you, I just want to get the weight off fast. It's all I care about. Then I'll switch to something sustainable. Okay? A question for you. How many times have you told yourself? How many times have you said, I'll just lock in right now. I'll just dial in right now. I'm gonna get this weight off and then I'll transition to something more sustainable. I'll be able to keep it off once I get it off. How many times? And how many times are you still here doing the same thing? Losing 10, 15, 20, 50 pounds, gaining 10, 15, 20, 50 pounds for 10, 15, 20 years. Somebody signed up for our 8-week challenge this past week, and they were saying how they've lost 100 pounds multiple times in their life. Think about that. They've lost 300 pounds over the course of their lifetime. And my thing is like, Obviously, that person has discipline, they have willpower, they have determination, they have work ethic, but they clearly don't have a plan that is sustainable for them. Otherwise, they would not have to keep losing the 100 pounds over. And so I think the rule is the habits that you use to lose the weight are the habits that you will use to keep the weight off. And I would really use that as law. Like, if you can't stick with your plan, if you don't see yourself sticking with a plan all week, that, so that includes the weekends, all week for the rest of your life, it's very hard to be able to keep that up. Now, I understand you're gonna have to eat in a calorie deficit. You're gonna have to eat less calories. You will. Like, right now, you probably don't have great habits, and so you're gonna have to make some habit changes. But those habit changes are much different than cutting out all of your foods that you like, cutting out food groups, cutting out bread, cutting out pasta. Like, somebody signed up for coaching with us recently, and she said she did like a different, you know, trainer's program or challenge or whatever. And in that challenge, they made her like cut out pasta and cut out bread for 6 weeks and do these things. And I'm like, Yeah. Why? Why? Like, it doesn't matter how much weight you lose. Like, you're not going to be able to keep that weight off because you can't keep doing that. And so if you're somebody who thinks this, I would just really try to encourage you, you know, think about it like this. If you're eating 1,200 calories and you're losing 10 pounds a month, which right now might sound great to you, I get it. But I also want to Challenge you of this. Let's say you stick with it for 3 months. If you're lucky, you lose 30 pounds in 3 months. You'd be probably pretty stoked about that. But because you're not able to stick with it, just like you haven't been thus far, the next 3 months, what do you do? You gain all the weight back. So now in 6 months, you've lost 0 pounds. You're in the same exact spot you were. Take somebody who's losing 4, maybe 5 pounds a month. So month 1, they lose 5 pounds. Month 2, 5 pounds. Month 3, 5 pounds. In a span of 6 months, that person is down 30 pounds and you're down 0 pounds. Not only are you down 0 pounds, but what else comes along with that? You don't believe in yourself anymore. You're pissed off at yourself. You're frustrated. You feel guilty. Your self-efficacy, your belief that you can actually stick with something continues to plummet, all because you just keep taking an unsustainable, unrealistic approach. So I would encourage you to also think about it long-term. I understand you want the weight off as fast as possible, but the slow way is actually the fast way because every pound you— like we tell our clients when they join coaching with us and they, and they sign up for the 8-week fat loss challenge, Which again, you can click the link in the description below to learn more. I'll tell people every pound you lose is gonna stay off forever, and you can have the confidence and the reassurance knowing that to be the case. The analogy I wrote down was like, it's like trying, trying to get a tan by getting a sunburn. If you lay out for 10 hours straight and you burn and you peel, and a week later, You're kind of back to where you started. Then you go do it again. You wonder why you never get a nice tan. I don't know how to tan perfectly, but this is some of the research I did. I think the better tan comes from 20, 30, 60 minutes a day, every day, just steady, consistent, less intensity, more duration over a period of time. And it's the same thing With your calories, which leads me to reason number 6. And this is the earlier I talked about the math of why you'll actually eat more calories and lose more fat. So here's what a week of 1,200 calories looks like for most people. And again, be honest with yourself here. Monday through Thursday, you might eat 1,200 calories. Cool. That's 4,800 calories. But Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you're off track eating 3,000 calories a day. You have dinner out, you have drinks, you have Sunday brunch, you have dessert. That's 9,000 calories over the course of 3 days. So the total for the week is 13,800 calories. If you divide that by 7 days, it's roughly about 2,000 calories per day. So you did not eat 1,200 calories. You're not following a 1,200-calorie diet all 7 days of the week. You are eating 2,000 calories per day. Now take the person who eats 1,700 calories per day, including the weekends. 1,700 times 7 is 11,900 calories. So the person who eats 1,700 calories per day ate 1,900 fewer calories that week than the person who's eating 1,200 calories per day. By eating more calories per day, you will lose weight faster by eating more food. That's simple math. And again, I know you think you can just willpower and discipline your way through sticking to 1,200 calories, but even if you do, Even if you do, you're gonna lose muscle. You're gonna slow down your metabolism. You're gonna gain the weight back. Just take a sustainable, realistic, slower approach in the beginning. It's like learning how to drive. If if you're a parent, or even if you're not, you learn how to drive a car. Would you if you were a parent? Would you want your kid going like seventy miles an hour? on the back roads when they first start driving? No, you take it slow. You gotta let them learn. You start in the parking lot, you start in your own driveway, you go around the block one or two times. Like, you gotta start it slow, but that's how you build a sustainable foundation. That's how you learn. And that's one big thing that we are big on in our coaching program is actually teaching you and educating you about habits. Calories, dieting, behavior change, because the more that you are educated, the more you'll be able to sustain all the results you get as well. So those are all the reasons why I do not recommend you eating 1,200 calories. Now, there is one caveat to this. Who might actually need 1,200 calories? Is there anybody who needs to eat 1,200 calories? Maybe. The person who may need 1,200 calories per day is usually a woman who is 5 foot or shorter with a small frame who doesn't really move much throughout the day. That's the only time we have ever, ever told somebody to eat around 1,200 calories. And even then, even with those clients, we actually almost never tell them 1,200 calories because Because we actually try to go the other way, which is we try to raise their calorie burn instead of slashing to 1,200 calories. And we do this in a couple of ways. Number one, increasing daily steps. So if we have maybe a woman who's on the more vertically challenged side and they sit at a desk all day, we really try to encourage getting extra steps, getting walks in the morning, getting walks throughout the day, walking after dinner. 'Cause if we can take somebody's steps from 4,000 per day to 8,000 per day, that would make a profound impact in how many calories they can eat and still lose weight. And the second part is how much protein they are eating. And because we're not eating 1,200 calories, we have more room to work our protein intake up. And for every 100 calories of protein you eat, your body burns up to 30 of those calories. So now We have the increased metabolism and calorie burn from more steps. Now we also have the increased metabolism and calorie burn from getting our protein intake up. The third part to that is building more muscle, because like we mentioned earlier, the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism is. Muscle requires more calories to burn at rest. So now we have steps, more protein, more muscle. You see how we're working up somebody's metabolism. And then the last part would be working in zone Zone 2 cardio. This is where your heart rate is at 60 to 70% of your max heart rate, or just being able to hold a conversation and still breathe through your nose while doing cardio. And this could look like incline treadmill walking after a workout or on rest days. This could be walking with a weighted vest, easy jogging when you can still talk. This zone 2 cardio burns extra calories with Without increasing your hunger, appetite, or cortisol, which would raise your metabolism, raise your daily calorie burn, so you don't have to eat as many calories, don't have to eat as few calories. So even for somebody who it would be right, we try to raise their maintenance calories so this individual can eat more and still lose, because the goal is never to eat as little as possible. The goal is to eat as much as possible while still losing fat. And if that sounds like something you want, again, this is exactly what we do in my 8-week fat loss challenge. We get a plan fully personalized to you, set up for you, that is built around your life, your preferences, your schedule, and you'll get paired up with a one-on-one coach who checks in all throughout the week, makes adjustments so you never plateau, and actually holds you accountable so you stay consistent. So if that sounds like something you believe is going to help in your journey, you can click the link in the video— in the description of the video below to learn more about our 8-week fat loss challenge. And just remember, 1,200 calories was never built for you. You don't need to follow it, and you'll see more progress actually eating more food. I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and we will chat next time.
