[nxc18]

800 calories for dinner is perfectly reasonable; salad aside, it is hard to get a meal going out that is less than that.

If you are very small you may need less than that. In that case, eat less.

If they were to ship out 400 calorie dinners, people would be very, very unsatisfied. If you're a small person, you probably don't experience this, but big people that are very active need to eat a lot. I know people that eat close to 4000 calories per day and could easily make room for more.

Personally, as someone on a weight loss journey (unapologetic euphemism for 'fatass'), I have paid very close attention to caloric intake. At my high, I would need about 2200 calories per day to lose weight at the supposed healthy rate of 2lbs per day. If I ate much less than that I wouldn't have energy and would be hungry constantly; this isn't healthy and one of the reasons starving oneself isn't a great weight loss strategy. Of course as I lost weight, my caloric needs changed - 20lbs down I started to need to eat closer to 2000 calories per day.

There are metabolism calculators online; in my case, I was surprised to see they accurately predicted how I would react to various levels of caloric intake.

I would recommend plugging in values you'd estimate for people you know and people you see on e.g. TV. You might be surprised at how different their experiences are in terms of what constitutes a healthy maintenance diet.