Don't understand how this works

It means that most of the weight you will lose will be muscle mass - and even at goal weigh, you will still have a high bodyfat persentage and look flabby with little muscle tone...It also means that due to the fat that you have less muscle, your metabolism will be slower and you will have to eat less food on maintenance that you could when holding on to as much muscle as possible...
You can do that by eating mostly nutritious food and do resistance training...
The off twirl, malteser of fizzie will not make you fat - the 80/20 rule worked for me...As long as you eat nutritious food for 80% of the time and have a snack for 20%, its still good...main thing is to stay within your calorie goal....

Hold that sweet tooth one minute, your question asks “as long as I am under calories” and as you will find there is always a contradiction. Everybody is different and I would never encourage anyone not to eat a balanced diet. Balanced means that you need to also keep an eye on your processed intake {i.e. sodium, sugar}. If you were eating a 1200 calorie diet but your sugar is 5000 then your chances of a weight loss are somewhere between yhea right and laughter.

Hey hun,

I'm in the same boat really, just starting out (again) and I just wanted to give my two cents.
You can have a piece of candy every once in a while, but once you start eating healthy, your cravings do change. So if you focus really hard (which sucks BTW ) and get all the junk out of your diet, you'll find that the process gets easier over time. You won't crave the same foods as you did before...

So yes, everything is ok in moderation...
I really like the 80/20 analogy used above.

Example: I used to be a fast food queen. Today I found out that eating a lot of albacore tuna out of the can will make you sick, so I had no lunch at work. I felt totally gross after going to taco bell, even getting the fresco menu stuff. I can't imagine getting a quarter pounder meal anymore. Which is good cause that would be like 75% of my calories for the day.

If you'd like a friend to work along, feel free to add me.

Take it one step at a time, and you'll get there! Try and make one great choice a day. It's a process and you can do this!

I highly recommend going to the locked threads at the top of this board under "LINKS in MFP you want to read again (and again)" and check out calorie amounts and what happens when you don't eat enough/or the right kind of cals

I have used this analogy before and I will use it again because I like it. Losing weight is like walking up a mountain with a blind fold, you take a step and see what happens. Sometimes your foot will slip and you will have to find a new foot hold and other times you will get into a groove and every step will be perfect. Ultimately it will take time to track what will work for you.

Logging in general works several ways. First it forces you to look at the raw calorie intake and moderate accordingly. Second as you log you will start to see trends in foods that work and do not work for you, for example there are people here that will tell you that you that they cannot lose weight while eating too many carbs no matte what the calorie total comes to. Third, there is not 'perfect' in logging, you can have that occasional chocolate cake because you are not on a diet, you are learning how to eat in moderation.

Finally, why is it a mountain? Because it is hard to lose weight. If you have friends and people to help you along it can be a little easier. This includes the MFP community as well as any friends and family who can encourage you on this trip.