Caloric-a-phobia

I invented a new mental disorder and diagnosed myself with it the other day. I'm in self-therapy and I'm working through the mental hurdles of overcoming my disease. Caloric-a-phobia can be defined as the fear of calories. Obviously from my last post, you already know I am struggling with this issue. But in the past several days I have eaten enough to boost my numbers up where they need to be. If all goes well today, this will be the 4th day in a row that I've achieve my goal of near-1400-calories/day. It has been a battle with myself, but I'm doing it. I think the main reason this is so hard for me is because I haven't allowed myself to regularly eat over 1200 calories/day for over 3 years. Remember that the 2 years before surgery I was on a very strict diet of 1200 calories. Then post-surgery my calories were down around 500 for a couple months and slowly increased until I was steadily at about 1000-1200. So jumping to 1400 is a huge step for me. Yes, there have been days since surgery where I've "pigged out" and eaten way more than my allotted calories. But, in my mind, those holidays don't count. Yes, I could easily hit the 1400 calorie/day mark by eating crappy food (a bag of Doritos would do the trick!). But I want to maintain my 40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fat nutrient balance -- which makes the whole meal planning process a bit difficult. Some have asked why I'm increasing my calories at this point -- when I still have weight to lose. Remember back in December when I had my 1 year follow up appointment with the surgeon's office? The Nutritionist told me at that time to increase my calories to 1500-1800/day. Yikes! I freaked out at that "seemingly random" number. I had my RMR (resting metobolic rate) tested and it showed I need 1450 calories per day to just exist as a blob. The nutritionist who gave the RMR test suggested I increase to at least the 1450 range. My PCP also suggested I increase my calories. All these suggestions came as a direct results of a weight loss plateau/slow down. I'm doing good this week with the Caloric-a-phobia. It has been an exhausting mental struggle - yes, my brain hurts from all the fighting going on inside my head. Maybe one day soon I'll be able to do this WLS Journey thing without so much hard work. Maybe. ~Pam