[SmartButt]

Breakfast
Nutri-grain cereal bar: 140
1 cup 2% milk: 120
1 cup bran cereal: 210
medium sized banana: 110

Lunch
Soup: (guesstimate): 160
Salad w/dressing: (guesstimate): 200

Snack
Yogurt = 110

Dinner
?

Without dinner you're at around 1000 calories with what you've mentioned. Unless your dinner is less than 200 calories, you should be fine.

[nineteen]

My guess is that you're eating more calories than you think.

[Heather]

Regardless of how many calories you're eating or should be eating, I'd ask you to think long term. What are your goals? Are you just thinking of losing weight, or do you want to be "healthy"? Do you just want to lose weight and then go back to your original habits or are you trying to build habits that will last a lifetime?

The reason I ask is because I completely agree this is a mental game, and sometimes it helps to figure out what your long term goals are -- it might change what goes on in your head.

[Wildfyre]

My long term goals are to be a healthy person, and get my weight under control before I miss out on things in my life. I'm only 18, and I'm sick of being held back by fat.

I know that to win this war, I have change my life, and not just my eating. This is going to be the rest of my life, and that's why I want to get this straight RIGHT NOW.

I want to be able to get past this mental block so that I can get back on track, and stop not losing anything because I'm not eating enough.

[Heather]

Sara, I wish I had been able to tackle this when I was your age!

I don't have any amazing answers for you. I guess the best I can say is this IS a mental journey and sometimes our mindsets are pretty well set, meaning it can be tough to change them. Don't expect to solve the problem right away, keep working and keep trying.

This is a great place to come to keep reminding yourself what you want. I sometimes find that when I give other people advice that it becomes easier for me to accept it for myself!

[JessicaBT]

I don't have any advice. I just wanted to say that I'm having the same problem. Except, I'm not worried about eating like a fat person exactly... Here's my dilemma. Every time I add enough foods to my chart to get up to 1500 calories, my fat and carbs go up way to high. When I keep the fat and carbs down, my calories stay down somewhere around 800. I just started, but for the last three days, people told me my calories were too low, so I added more, and ate more, and then people told me that my fat and carbs were way to high.
My problem is that I can't buy any more groceries until tomorrow, (pay day) and I have to eat things that are already in my house. And most of what is in my house is things I shouldn't be eating. If I added more calories and kept the fat and carbs down to a reasonable number, I'd still feel like I was eating better Because I would be.

[Heather]

Jessica -- It sounds like you're trying to do everything right all at once! If this is going to be a lifetime journey, you can take a little bit to sort out your eating!

Until you go shopping, why not just pay attention to calories. In the meantime, make a shopping list of foods you would like to eat that are lower in fat, etc. And go from there.

Sometimes it's too hard to fix everything all at once! Give yourself the time to plan so you CAN be successful. If you keep feeling you aren't doing it all right, you are more likely to throw in the towel and give up!