give me the 1200 calorie rant
ok first of all anon ty for sensing my desire to rant about this through that one tag alone you're a real one for that
anyway SO one thing about the 1200cal/day recommendation for women is afaik it's generally presented as Dieting Calories, aka it's the *lowest* they're supposed to go, but not always. it's sometimes thrown out as a decent maintenance intake for 'short sedentary women', and while Yes there are outliers in any population and people have different needs etc. i feel like 'short' is, uh, underselling it a bit
^this is the tallest i could make a hypothetical completely sedentary woman with a Technically healthy BMI (18.6, which is Really pushing 'clinically underweight') and have her energy needs be anywhere near as low as 1200. four feet ten inches tall.
(also, as far as i can tell, dwarfism tends to skew BMI high anyway, meaning this hypothetical person i invented for this tdee calculator is still almost definitely underweight for her height)
okay, so what about as a temporary deficit then?
STILL A STUPID NUMBER. remember, this figure is thrown out as advice to *women in general*. i'm from the US, the average woman here weighs 170lbs. current recommendations for daily protein intake are around .8g per pound of bodyweight
do you know how hard it is to get HALF your daily calories from protein? and honestly, eating 'enough' protein isn't nearly as important as exercise when it comes to maintaining muscle mass and bone density, but guess what exercise does? IT USES ENERGY
moderate exercise puts the Average Woman in a caloric deficit of OVER A THOUSAND calories per day. even light activity makes it ballpark 1k. i don't care what kind of exercise you're doing, you're definitely losing lean mass on that kind of intake
now of course theoretically, somewhere on the spectrum between the Average American (active) and dwarf lady who does fuck all, there is a woman for whom 1200 is a safe enough temporary daily intake to maintain for a few weeks with no ill effects. i'm sure she'll find this post somehow and tell me about it. my point is not that she does not exist, but that her situation is 1) fairly uncommon 2) difficult to ascertain without medical supervision and 3) FREQUENTLY IMPOSED UPON WOMEN WHO ARE NOT HER BY THE VERY MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS NECESSARY FOR SAID SUPERVISION FOR SOME REASON.
and this is all, for argument's sake, 'by the book' stuff. these online calculators are just using averages, and they can be off by a lot (if i plug all my stats in the maintenance number it gives me is at least 300kcal too low). i'm not even touching on the issues with BMI as a metric, the weird shit food restriction does to your head (that's like a whole other rant honestly), the way our healthcare system is inadequate down to its bones at giving patients any resources at All to help them achieve the 'health' standards it holds them to, etc. we have multiple consecutive generations of people atp convinced, deep down, that less food is ALWAYS healthier, better, more disciplined, more Good to a degree that makes dangerous levels of restriction feel like 'playing it safe' compared to eating the amount they actually need
if we're going to make overtures to Health and Wellbeing we have GOT to start prioritizing things like mental health and bone density and muscle mass before some population-level-stats ass idea of the Correct Weight to Be. ESPECIALLY in women and especially ESPECIALLY in women over 30, who are the primary group at risk of sarcopenia and osteopenia and also the most likely to be told to eat 1200 calories a day by their doctor
