Hi

Hey nicole,
I'm in college too and I definitely put on the pounds when I started. It is hard to eat healthy in the dining areas but, just do your best to stay away from the fried foods and pizza and try eating more salads, fruit and veggies, or healthy sandwiches without too much condiments. For snacks instead of cookies and candy, Apples and peanut butter are great, so are rice cakes. Just doing those little things helped me alot. I also try my best to always drink water instead of soda. I'm definitely not saying that I dont ever eat the pizza and fries...just not as often!! If you decide to start working out try to do so before you eat. And with the 1200 calories- whatever calories you burn while working out are sort of like the extra calories that you can eat. Try to have at least 1200 calories a day-- otherwise you'll be hurting your body more than helping it!
I hope that helps some!!

Hi Nicole,
First, welcome, and best of luck loosing the pounds. This will be a long one as you asked some questions that require some detail. Hope you don't get bored
I can say that, while I'm no longer in college, I am not so far removed that I forget what Cafe food is like. Nor do I forget what the overall college experience can do to a body.

So, with that in mind, here are my answers to your questions along with a few helpful (hopefully) comments.
OK so eating healthy in college is all about self control, and NOT following the crowd. Stay away from lots of bad carbs you can look up lists of what consists of bad carbs here:
http://diabetes.webmd.com/glycemic-index-good-versus-bad-carbs
That doesn't mean never touch them, just try to keep it to a minimum. You burn bad carbs fast, unless you are running a 15K they really don't help the body much. and yes, I count beer as bad carbs
Next, as redalee said, drink your water, you almost can't have too much, water is the body's toxin cleanser, the more you drink, the faster your body will flush toxins, plus it helps to keep you feeling more full.
As to the caloric intake question, 1200 calories a day is a guideline, not every person needs that few calories to loose weight, for instance, for me, 1200 calories would be starvation since I usually need 2200 to maintain (cutting 1000 calories a day is pretty drastic!). If that is the amount that the site recommends then ok, but if you just read somewhere that you should have 1200, then I would check the site's weight loss plan wizard, it will give you a better idea. For now lets say 1200 calories is what the site recommends, that would most likely be before you add in exercise caloires. So the example would be this:
normal caloric intake to loose weight :1200 calories/day
exercise amount: 250 calories/day
total calories per day allowable: 1450 calories/day

That 850 calories/week is the amount you will be below maintain level, I.E. the amount that would keep you at your current weight.

The other thing to keep in mind is this, don't stress too much about daily intake, if you hit your goals one day and miss by 100 calories another, don't worry too much, as long as you are consious of your food intake and keep it where it needs to be, you should be fine!

The only eating tip I can give you besides lots of veggies and fruit and no deep fried stuff is this: if your cafe has a coldcut station, have them make you wraps with lettuce instead of bread, it cuts out most of the bad carbs and if you choose something like turkey breast or low fat roast beef (the lesser of the processed meats) and stick with mustard over mayo you can drastically improve your nutritional values! And believe it or not, they taste fantastic!
Sorry for the length, hope this helps.