Looking for a diet mentor to help me "translate" menus

[Fujiko]

Hi everybody, I'm writing from Italy. Hope my english would be good enough
My husband and I started Phase 1 on 02.01.2012, and we both have to lose about 24/26 lbs.
I have two SBD books, both in italian, and as you can imagine, they've been translated and recipes have been adapted.
I have the feeling that the total amount of calories/food we can eat daily is less than the american version.
For example, there's no yogurt in our phase 1. No mention about 1/2 cup of beans daily. No milk. No sodas.

So I'm a bit confused. Can I have one daily Cola Zero? Can I eat yogurt? If I have meat or fish at lunch, can I also have a couple of tbs of cream cheese? Can I eat mozzarella as a main meal? Can I have wurstel, since 4 of them have 100 calories?
And what do I look in a food label? For example, I went to the supermarket this morning, and discovered that philadelphia light (I don't know if it's called the same in the US, basically it's cream cheese) has less calories than the regular one, but has more fats and carbs. Which one is better for me to choose?

Sorry if these questions are annoying or dumb, but I really want to make things right, and it's very hard for me, as I'm not really a junk food lover, but I used to have pasta at least once a day (miss it so much).
Thanks in advance!

[Kimboroni]

Your translation is probably based on the original 2003 book, and many of the changes that you're asking about came out in 2004. Go ahead and use the updated food lists and other information in the FAQ (stickied at the top of the forum, and linked in my signature) to answer questions. I'll try to answer some of them:

Can I have one daily Cola Zero? yes

Can I eat yogurt? yes-- fat-free or low-fat plain yogurt as part of your dairy

If I have meat or fish at lunch, can I also have a couple of tbs of cream cheese? sure

Can I eat mozzarella as a main meal? that sounds like too much cheese

Can I have wurstel, since 4 of them have 100 calories? I don't know what that is. But we rarely look at calories to determine if you can have something.

[Fujiko]

OMG, that makes me feel so much better!
Really appreciated your sooo fast answer!
You said you usually don't look at calories to determine what to eat and what to avoid. So it's more important to look at carbs and fats, I suppose.
And...these are wurstel http://goo.gl/BbA2A
I don't eat pork, so I only take the chicken+turkey ones, and in Italy they don't have like the white spots of fat inside, no skin and they're quite small. We usually just boil them or grill them with no oil or butter.
They don't have polyphosphate added and here's the label:
for 3.53 oz (four wurstel): 188kcal; 0.53 oz proteins, 0.02 carbs, 0.49 fats.

[Kimboroni]

First I look at the main ingredients to see if everything is allowed.

After that, there are some guidelines on choosing foods, such as how to determine if a protein is lean or not, if a salad dressing has too much sugar, how much fiber to look for on grains, etc. Most of those are in the food list.

There aren't any set "too many fats" or "too many carbs" rules that work for all foods. What works for salad dressing as far as the number of fat grams wouldn't work at all for meats, for example, since you're looking at different kinds of fat for those foods. Or what works for milk as far as grams of sugar wouldn't work for salad dressing, since they have different kinds of sugar.

It's really a food and ingredient based program, not one based on counting carbs or fat grams.