I am doing about 1800 calories a day too. Here is an average day for me.
Breakfast - 1 hard boiled egg a piece of wheat toast with I can't beleive it's not butter spray. I am not hungry in the mornings so no morning snack. Lunch lean cuisine or WW frozen meals calories anywhere from 150 -350 calories. Afternoon snack 100 calorie bag popcorn and celery with a small amount of homeade dip or 100 calorie snack pack cookies. Dinner varies. Evening snack sugar free ice cream bar or WW desert.

I notice you live in San Diego. You probably have access to Trader Joe's. I get my Kashi Good Friends Fiber and Organic Morning Lite cereals there. They are by far the cheapest place I've found them.

For breakfast I have 1/2 cup each with either a banana or some blueberries. Safeway has the organic ones at buy 1 get 1 free right now.

Thanks to this site, I've discovered almond milk. It gives my cereal a nice almondy flavor with far less cals and fat than 1% milk.

I recently cut down to 1/2 cup each instead of 1 full cup of the fiber and 1/2 of the other. I found I was still wanting my snack in mid morning so why have the extra cals at breakfast?

My snacks vary. Today is yogurt mixed with fresh blueberries. Other days is 2 Ry Krisp onion dill flavored crackers with 1 wedge of Laughing Cow lite cheese.

Lunches vary. Sometimes it is leftover soup or something from dinner. Today is shrimp and veggies from the frozed section at Safeway.

Also, if I'm having something for lunch that I know won't fill me up, say a 200 cal meal, I'll bring 2 cups of mixed frozen veggies and nuke those to fill me up without many cals.

I quit going out to lunch. That was the biggest favor I did myself. I will allow myself lunch out 1 or 2 times a month. I use dietfacts.com to research the restaurant or an equivalent and choose my food accordingly. I love Mexican food. I will have a fajita salad. Lots of sauteed veggies over a salad. I still have a few chips and salsa but I limit them. When we go out, boobalah laughs because I separate out 12 chips and that is it.

Congrats on your choice. There is a section on here for fitness videos. If you decided to do any, you will get support there as well.

On a personal note, your BF needs to learn to cook.

I aim for about 1900 calories a day. Usually break it up as 400-500 calories for the meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and then snacks between 100-200 calories.
For breakfast I usually do a cup of cereal, a healthy kind, with light soy milk and then a piece of fruit. I use fruit, nuts, pretzels, and soy ice cream sandwiches for snacks. Lunch is usually a sandwich and veggies (carrots or salad), and then dinner is where I usually mix things up and do a lot of different meals.
Good luck with your calorie counting...it works!

Have you tried Progresso light soups? Only 120 cals per can. I keep a couple of cans at work for lunch. Nobody else in our house eats veggies. So on the weekend, I cook a few different veggies and put them in single serving containers for later. I works out good for me and makes it easier to get in all my veggies for the day.

Lol!
 

LOL! I know! His idea of cooking is ordering pizza or heating up leftovers. If I want to eat right, I gotta cook myself. So, I usually have my laptop balanced on the kitchen counter, so I can study while I cook. He will do prep work and make the salad though. He tries to help, but gets distracted easily. I learned the hard way not to let him cook with a game on, he gets so sucked in that he forgets about the food and burns it! Oh well, I love him!
Working full-time and being a full-time student while trying to learn new recipes, etc has been challenging. I know that if I can do it now, with everything going on, I can do it forever. I have made time to log my calories and get on here a few times a day, no matter what else I have going on; it keeps me centered!

I tend to front load my calories - have more during the day and eat a lighter dinner. I've found that eating lighter in the evening helps *me* a lot - I don't feel so full when I go to sleep and I haven't had heartburn at night in months and months.

That said, here's a typical day's menu for me (copied from my *********** diary from Monday):

Breakfast - 230
Yoplait yogurt
(or plain oatmeal w/ splenda - same amount of cals as the yogurt)
(or a whole wheat waffle with all fruit spread - same cals again)
Coffee

Snack - 170
Sunflower seeds or almonds

Lunch - 450
Baked brown rice
Black beans
Chopped chicken breast
Salsa

Snack - 110
Apple
String cheese

Dinner - 280
Spinach salad
Mahi grilled in butter w/ mushrooms


Total calories for the day: 1240
That still leaves me 260 calories (on a 1500 cal diet) to play around with. I can have a couple of squares of dark chocolate if I want (130 cal). Or I can add a baked sweet potato to dinner (100 cal). Or I can even have a glass of wine with dinner (110 cal).

So you can see that my biggest calorie expense is at lunch - and it helps get me through the rest of the day. I also try to have a protein snack in the afternoon because I go to the gym after work and find that if I don't have some protein, I have a harder time of it.