Trouble meeting calorie goals

If you can't eat all your calories then how did you become 72lbs overweight to begin with? I'm not being funny, I just don't understand these "help, I can't eat my calories" posts.

I wish I had a problem eating my calories. Then I wouldn't be in this situation.

It's, at least, risky to give a psychological profile based on a MFP post. I know that we want to help, but I think that is worth to change the "you are" for "I think that", "it happened to me that", and so on.

So first, it's great that you are changing your habits and you found yourself full without hitting the goal.

The best deficit is between the 10 to 25% range. Higher than that, you might harm your body (not giving him the necessary nutrients), so it's important that, as long as you want to keep you healthy, you look for ways to improve your eating (unless you're already in that range).

The warning on MFP is based on the "starvation mode" which is a point where you're creating a deficit huge enough that your body tells itself that he should stop burning food calories, and it'd be better to take them from other (not so nice) places. There's a nice article here:
https://www.netwellness.org/question.cfm/28515.htm

After that intro, here are some options for you:
+ Improving your appetite, for example by doing some exercise.
+ Improving the quantity of food, which you already stated you'd prefer not to (because you already feel full).
+ Improving the quality of your meals. You can eat the same amount and still hit a healthy deficit.

I think the last might be the more suitable, and a combination of the last and the first, the best choice.

Severe depression.

I'm not trying to be a jerk with the "problem" of not having enough of an appetite. I'm trying to get help and to figure out how it's going to impact my long term goals.

I didn't see this before I posted above. Sorry you're going through this!

I had a problem reaching my calorie count after I changed the type of food I eat (from whatever to heallthy, almost not processed food), and as you state I was always full but unable to meet the quota. I'm now eating 5 times a day, and even still i had trouble reaching my desired amount of proteins so I added proteing powder to my diet, so thats what I did to achieve the quota, hope it helps.
Regards,

Some antidepressants do suppress your appetite. I agree with the above about seeking out nutrient rich foods. Also talk to your doctor about whether you might need vitamins to help make sure you get what you need even if you can't quite eat enough. It's not the whole answer but it might fill in the gaps.

If you make your diary public, I bet you'll get some help. There are some very knowledgeable people around here.

But I'll go ahead and throw this out there: a lot of people go into weight-loss thinking they have to eat "diet foods". Eat regular things. The same things you ate when you were gaining weight. Just eat less of it now.

This^

So many people start a diet looking for high volume, low calorie foods and then eat a ton of those. Fiber is great, but it's nutritionally value is limited.

Dietary fat is necessary. Olive oil, avocado, nut butters, nuts, and seeds are low volume calorie dense foods and they contain healthy fats. Roast veggies in olive oil. Use full fat salad dressing and add a handful of nuts to your salad.

You could drink your calories.....smoothies can be calorie dense.

My question is what are you eating differently now than what you were eating before you started your diet? If you're 500 calories under your goal for the day why not enjoy an ice cream or a piece of chocolate? There's always room for those, and I dare you to try not to smile while eating some ice-cream. Sometimes on a really good day I'll treat myself to a can of regular coke, which is like candy for me now since I've cut it out almost completely.

By eating under your calorie goals consistently you are doing a lot of hard work and watching what you are eating, maybe a little too strictly. Remember it's not what you eat, it's about how much calories it has.

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I found the same problem when I was starting out. As others said, using a balance of more calorie dense foods helps.

I have what I call 'fill in' foods, which I became more familiar with as I logged over a few months.
Some days are perfect with hitting calorie and macro's in a good balance, and obviously some days not so much (for me personally, anyway)

It happens, and if it does I can go back and look through my diary or remember the foods that helped me increase calories and get my fat intake up if I'm low (like peanut butter or nuts) or help me get my calories up without going over carbs or fats etc (e.g greek yogurt, chicken breast) or helped me up my carbs and calories without going over fat (e.g fruit) and so on, so that I know what I can have to help get me there.

Also, I definitely find it helpful to plan ahead a day or so instead of just winging it and finding I don't make it.
Just a couple of days or one week where you try and pre organise, trial logging different foods, might help to get you on track and more experienced with what to eat to reach the calories and macro's you need. Or cook up some food that will last a few days.

And it may not be relevant to you personally, but I'd also make sure you try not to begin eating too late in the day, it's a trap I've fallen into a few times on weekend sleep-ins that made it really hard to try and get in all my calories because I was just too full! lol

Best of luck with your health goals

I've made my diary public for the time being - and you can see that I still have Egg McMuffin's sometimes I

Big fan and addict of the Egg McMuffin :P

Ice cream, wine, beer, cheese and peanut butter - my first choices when I have leftover calories