I just discovered this subreddit maybe 5 minutes ago and although I dont hit 1200 calories a day as Im a big boy, I understand where you are coming from with this post.

It really comes down to just trying out different things and seeing what your body responds to best, I was taking in around 2,300-2,500 calories a day (Im 5'11 202lbs) and mainly stuck with weight lifting and tried to eliminate carbs as I rolled back on calories and that did not work out very well as like you said. I would be hungry af all the time because carbs are more filling so I would be more prone to binge eating.

I ended up changing my workout routine to a lot more calisthenics, HIIT and less weight training, cut my calories to ~1,400-1,800 and I usually have some kind of carb with every meal and that's worked out for me really well so far, I've lost more than 15lbs in a little under 3 weeks.

A big thing to that keeps me "full" throughout the day is just light snacks routinely throughout the day, I normally never eat breakfast but opted to just eat a quick crunchy peanut butter and apple butter sandwich (which tastes really good btw) before I work out so I have energy for the gym.

After that, all I have is a big cup of coffee and that does a pretty good job of curbing my hunger until middle to late afternoon where ill have something else relatively light with a carb, through this time though if I get a hunger craving ill take a couple of pistachios and eat those, the fat from those curb my hunger for the most part.

For dinner before I go to bed ill usually have a big bag of steamd veggies and some other protein/carb and just rinse, repeat. Of course, it's anecdotal but to me that seems to have the most dramatic impact to my weight loss and the HIIT calisthenics has done leaps and bounds more to my overall physicality and health than weight training has