Within certain parameters. That doesn't mean everybody HAS to lose that amount in a week, especially, as said before, if the amount of calories you drop down to to achieve that puts you under your minimal requirements.
I didn't say anyone HAD to do anything, I specifically said that it depends on how much weight you want to lose and how quickly. You accuse me of putting words in people mouths, WOW...
You don't assume anything, so you give out potentially unhealthy advice? That's not how I do it, sorry. It's common sense to assume that somebody wants to stay healthy during their weight loss. Also, I have never said anything about pushing your body to the limit, nor did I ever mention that weight loss without exercise is unsafe. Please do not put words into my mouth that I have never said.
I said weight loss wasn't necessary, you said I was giving out unsafe advice, I'm not putting words into your mouth, you clearly wrote that, scroll up and read your own post.
What gets me most is that you suggest DITCHING the exercise to somebody who pointed out that they already have a gym membership and are clearly willing to do some exercise. Why suggest something that will put her at a disadvantage?? Just because YOU don't like to exercise?
NO, I did not. Again you're putting words in my mouth and I don't appreciate that. My original post is there, what I said is that exercise doesn't burn many calories and that you need to be realistic about how many you burn when you exercise. There is a very specific reason for this, because if you do not well understand how many calories are lost to exercise it's easy to essentially neutralise all that effort with a bad diet.
What that results in lots of effort spent and noting gained which is a massive mental barrier to weight loss, people easily give up on weight loss when they do things and see no result, if someone is say treating themselves to ice cream because they've spent 2 hours in the gym and feel like they've earned it could be significantly gaining calories because they don't have perspective on how many calories you're burning vs how many you're getting in your diet.
What I said in my original post if you took just 5 seconds to read is that she should educate her self as to how many calories are burnt when doing specific exercise. Her approach to asking advice was to ask how many hours down the gym she should spend to lose weight and as I said before, the primary component to losing weight is not exercise, it burns off so little calories that the answer would be that you'd need to spend literally half your life in the gym to see noticeable benefits to weight loss.
I didn't disregard it as helpful, I specifically said in my second post that a mix between exercise and diet is good because you can make up that deficit easier each day, again go back and READ what I actually said.
I never said that exercise is necessary for weight loss. In fact I specified that it isn't. Once more, you suffer from selective reading - you read what you want to. Nobody talked about hours and hours in the gym either.
You said that it's unhealthy to lose weight without exercise, how can that translate into anything but exercise being necessary. If it wasn't necessary in your mind, you'd have no qualm with my post, which you clearly have.
You need to spend a long time doing cardio to lose significant amount of weight, if you spend only a short time doing light exercise you'll see very little in the way of calorie loss.
Again let me state that my original advice was simply to educate yourself in the amount of calories that different exercise burns off, it's important to have perspective. For some people that trade off is simply not worth it, or worse if someone thinks it's the only route to weight loss they may just give up entirely which is the worst case scenario.
You are not eating enough.
Define "enough".
If you read all your sources carefully, you will see that most of them state clearly that 1200 calories are lower than the minimum amount of calories required. You are essentially starving your body. I don't know your stats, but unless you are under about 120 lbs at your height, you're undernourished.
I'm Male, 6'1" tall and was nearly 250lbs, I'm currently about 235lbs after approx 4 weeks of diet only.
Of course I'm "undernourished", the definition of undernourished is that you don't have enough nourishment for good health, anyone that is losing weight is going to be undernourished, you HAVE to be undernourished to lose weight, that's the whole point, your body is overnourised and storing excess as fat and you're trying to do the opposite and be undernourished so your body retrieves that energy from your fat. The only thing that matters is are you undernourished to a safe degree, 1200 is a clearly stated acceptable minimum for women and so is perfectly good advice to recommend that low.
If your body is so clever, how did you manage to become overweight in the first place? If your body is smart enough to let you know when to eat, surely it would be smart enough to let you know when you had enough?
It does let me know when I've had enough, but guess what FOOD IS GOOD, sugar is good, salt is good, dairy is good, doughnuts full of cream and jam, covered in sugar taste great! It's a case of ignoring your bodies response to being full in order to get the pleasure of eating things that taste good.
You are also vastly underestimating the complexity of weight loss. Just because you are 1000 cals under maintenance, it won't mean you will steadily lose 2 lbs per week. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee you that within a rather short time, your weight loss will stagnate because your body has gone into full blown starvation mode, holding on to everything, and adjusting to working with what little bit of energy you allow it to have. So in order to lose, you would have to drop even more calories - the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.
Actually I've been 1500 cals under maintenance (target) and a little more than that in actual achievement and I've see almost exact drop in my weight relative to the amount expected. I'm not "starving", If I'm hungry I eat.
You apparently know how to use google. If you wanted to, you could find several million pages, all full of detailed information why going too low in your calories is not just detrimental to your weight loss in the long run, it is also dangerous. Have a look on this forum as well, read the stickies, especially those that pertain extremely low calorie diets and starvation mode. You might be surprised.
Yes, that information is available, there are loads of health sources saying 1200 cals is fine for a female, I cited several sources none of which you've contested.
2lbs weight loss is commonly stated as the maximum safe loss per week, and 1200 cals is commonly stated as the minimum safe daily calorie limit, you'll see it mentioned everywhere.
It's time to change. 
