sticking to calorie goal

In the past I've failed because I wasn't ready or willing to give up my super high calorie habits. There's nothing wrong with eating anything, as long as it's in moderation, but everyone has those foods that trigger a binge - for me, those things were nutella, potato chips, & ice cream. I could sit down with any one of those things & eat the entire container. So now I try to avoid them altogether so I'm not tempted. Identify the things that are your downfall and try to address them. Try to cut out foods that you know you can't control yourself with, or find ways to eat them in moderation.

One of my biggest issues in the past has been friends asking me to go out for drinks or to eat - I just can't say no! I still struggle with that, but I do it less often now - maybe once every week or two, rather than several times a week. In terms of fast food, I'm not really sure how I broke away from it. Nowadays when I'm out shopping & think '*insert fast food place* sounds really good right now... I think I'll stop & get some on the way home', I just force myself to drive home. For me, once I'm home I'm not likely to leave again. So as long as I make it home, I'm safe.

I would strongly suggest taking food with you to work. I'm a grad student in class most of the day, so I feel you on the 'sedentary' lifestyle. If I don't take my own food with me I almost ALWAYS end up going to a fast food place on campus to eat, but when I have snacks or a sandwich from home, I am able to say no to getting food on campus 95% of the time.

Just keep trying new things until you find something that works for you. It took me forever to realize I'm a happily consistent & boring eater - I literally eat the same thing or some variation of the same things every single day. This has worked great for me because once I found foods/meals that I loved & that fit into my calorie goal, I knew I could succeed everyday because I eat the same things daily.

I had a problem with fast food that has actually mostly resolved itself in the past few months. The issue wasn't the one item I was craving, it was going there looking at the whole menu and getting two more items in addition. The calories add up on that pretty fast. Step one is to log it all. The gravy the dipping sauces, the fries, all of it. When I realized the chicken strips, for example, were really all I wanted, I started paying more attention to my allrecipes.com app. Found chicken strips and ate those for dinner every night till you couldn't pay me to eat them, fast food OR home made :laugh: I've made pizzas at home as well for dinner until it's just any other meal, and if I want it, I like my homemade version better. I found the recipes, or really, basic instructions, on a thread here. I found a mug coffee cake recipe on allrecipes.com that I've been making, and suddenly I'm not craving blizzards as much.

So for me, the key is making the stuff I want at home. I can control the serving size by making just the amount I want to eat and am comfortable logging, without having to deal with being tempted with additional items I don't really want. Some days will still be a splurge, but when you get that down to once a week or once every two weeks, the caloric damage done can be minimized

1320 calories per day may be a bit low, though. What are your stats?

Oh, one more tip for meal plan/prep. Enter the food you prep into MFP ahead of time. For instance, yesterday morning I prepped lunch, dinner & snacks for Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday -- and I entered everything into MFP for all 3 days all at once. So I knew right away where I stood for the next few days with calories & macros. Then I could see where I have some flexibility to change up breakfast & some snack options.

Sometimes it's a simple & silly as thinking to myself "well, it's already logged on MFP, so I have to stick to it!".

Also, have a few standby recipes/foods that you like, and foods/recipes you repeat often, and get to know their numbers. It makes it easy to look at your food log for the day and easily/quickly know what you can add/subtract to hit your daily calorie goal.

HTH!