Its a question of defensiveness for downvoters and what could be percieved as passive aggressive questioning for you. I know you phrased your question carefully but this is not an academic audience.

"Seems extreme" = wrong.

"Shooting for 1200" = cant even count calories and failing at our entire purpose.

"Just want extreme weight loss" = fad diet and unrealistic expectations.

I know that wasnt your intent but that was one way ot could be read.

Basically... nutritional guidelines are averages. An arbitrary "1200 is too small" doesnt account for outliers. For small women or women who want to lose a very reasonable 2 lbs a week, 120p is entirely reasonable.

And you are damn right it is not much food. You are damn right it makes us cranky. You are damn right it is SUPER hard to stick to, to find good meal preps that are filling, to get any sort of support for a totally valid diet that most people will scoff at and make us feel worse.

Thus this subreddit.

Thus the popularity of her post. It looks filling and tasty.