How many calories do I need?

You need to figure out your BMR and your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) and eat somewhere within those two numbers.

scoobysworkshop.com is a good place to start. On the right, you can click on accurate calorie calculator, input your stats and go from there. If you scroll down, it will have your BMR, TDEE and projected weight loss. Then you can modify your results on MFP to fit that.

There are many other sites and tips and tricks. I keep it simple, but you can search the forums and find loads of good information.

Agreed, tdee is the best way to figure this out! I started out on mfp a few years ago and had it set to sedentary, was eating 1600 calories a day, not losing any weight and gave up. Figured out my tdee and came back a couple months ago. I eat about 2000 calories a day now and have had pretty steady weight loss good luck!

I know it's scary to eat that much, but do it! I had my doubts, but it worked. One thing to consider is this: when we are bigger, we are using more calories to do things because we're carrying extra weight. As we get smaller, we'll use less and in turn need to eat less. If you start out eating 1500 calories a day, in order to decrease your intake as you shrink, you'd have to pretty much starve yourself. My undertanding is that eating too little will work short term, but people inevitably plateau and screw up their metabolism.