having a hardtime eating 1200 cals

What was hard for me yesterday, was
- I didn't understand WHY I wasn't hungry if I barely ate 1200 cals, but I learned that there's some days that you're not just that hungry. Never happen to me before. It might be the whole brain being a ''cheerleader'' or whatever the other poster said, it might be that it was fricking warm and humid yesterday. But since I -never- really checked what I ate before, I had no way of knowing. All I know is that I ate way less than before, and didn't feel hungry.

This happened to me at first. I started on my weight loss plan before actively using MFP and was eating based on my idea (not that different than my current idea) of a healthy plan and being careful about serving size and so on and was shocked when I started to see that I was eating 900-1000, since I hadn't felt hungry. It's very hard to convince yourself you should eat more when you feel like you are eating lots of food and are not hungry, although I did end up doing that. One issue for me is that I think I'm very much a volume eater, so the fact that I was eating plates full of vegetables and a reasonable seeming portion of meat or omelet or the like made me feel quite satisfied. I also agree with the person who mentioned the brain as a cheerleader. I can still feel comfortable on 1200 (I did 1250 for a while), but it tends to irritate me if I end up at that level because of a really inactive day or some such, and I'd never do it as my main goal now--it wouldn't be sustainable. I'd be bored and feel deprived. At first, though, I was really enthusiastic about all the great food I was eating and how not hungry I felt and how much better I felt than when I was eating too many carb-heavy snacks and feeling like I was going up and down all day, so I didn't have that problem at all. So in my experience (and this is not a slam at all), it's a problem that does cure itself.

it's super easy for me to reach 1600 cals, hell, super easy for me to eat 2500 cals if I want to, bring me to any fastfood or steakhouse and believe me I'll eat everything on the damn plate. (was raised with the ''there's little kid in Africa dying of hunger, you finish your plate'!)

What's NOT EASY for me, is eat 1600 HEALTHY Cals. It's hard for a *kitten* tone of reason, bad eating habit being one of them, having a super fricking picky boyfriend is another part (though that was sorted by a ''my food, you can have some, if you don't want some, here's some toasts or whatever you wanna cook)

How I did it was pre-logging my food for a while and seeing where I could add more calories. For example, I was cutting carbs pretty heavily (I would have a small serving of starch maybe one meal and for the others just add in extra vegetables, which have far fewer calories, and I wasn't snacking at all). I realized when I looked at the day as a whole and saw I needed more calories that I could add back in some of those starches (maybe have a sandwich for lunch after all or a full serving of potatoes with dinner or even some pasta on occasion) and that if I wasn't eating them I needed to replace the calories somehow. Typically this meant that I had to get over my idea that it was wrong to eat more than 3-4 oz of meat and eat a bit more or add a fruit or dairy side. I also saw that I was cutting fat a bit much--using nothing but olive oil spray, vinegar/mustard-based salad dressing only, no cheese, no fat dairy, etc. I eased up on this too--I still mostly use spray, but spray more heavily and log it, add in some olives and cheese to my salad, feta to my omelet, include chicken with skin and some wider variety of meats, etc.

Also, I decided after a break that it was okay to add back in dessert, although I at first kept it to when I had exercise calories and was careful to give it a regular place so I wouldn't start with my bad habit of using food for comfort. This allowed me to eat it in moderation and not trigger anything, and is something that people will have to do based on their own issues and personalities, etc.

Anyway, all this helped me understand how I could build a satisfying diet within my calories without overdoing it on restriction. Logging is great because it's so easy to plan or go back and see what did and didn't work.

Oh, and IMO ignore all the special diets and just eat generally healthy--mostly nutrient-dense foods (which include protein rich foods like meat and dairy and eggs, as well as fruits and veggies), with some treats too, unless there's a reason to avoid them. It's funny that eating a healthy diet for me seems to be basically just like eating how I kind of grew up thinking of healthy. Sure, not everyone did--I was lucky--but these days there's such an effort to make eating into some kind of special magic formula that you have to get exactly right or fail. It's much easier than that, IMO.

Welcome!