About a month in and looking for advice.

So I have been trying pretty hard to get back into good shape and develop a reasonable diet that I will maintain. A tiny bit about me is I am 29 and started out at around 235 pounds. I am down to about 225 already so I feel making good progress.

My new diet has really just been me altering the foods I eat, I have cut out fast food and frozen food. I am trying to get less fat and carbs and a bit more protein as well. I have been keeping track of my food. I often eat around 1,000-1,500 calories a day. It is hard for me to eat much more than this because I just normally don't eat a lot of food and I am not really hungry often. I have tried to eat more times throughout the day and make sure always eat something for breakfast now. I drink a good amount of water every day as well. I take a multivitamin as well. I don't really have any current health problems, my blood pressure is very good for someone my size as is my cholesterol.

For exercise I work out at the school gym on an elliptical machine for around 60 minutes each weekday. At home I try to do like bicep curls and push ups and sit ups. I want to jog but I have a really bad knee and have found the only two things that don't make my knee swell up really big is exercise bike and elliptical. I think the elliptical is better because I feel much more tired when I work out on it compared to bike. During my work out I usually set some resistance and my average HR is probably around 155 with it being low starting and usually ending up around 170 towards the end of workout. The machine typically says I burned around 700 calories but I don't trust it that much so report it as 400-500. I want to start lifting but really don't want to do it in the gym because the lift area at my gym is extremely crowded.

So here is where I am hoping to get some advice. Is my diet ideas alright? I know that once I add in exercise my net calories for the day can be pretty low but it seems weird for me to eat more when I had gained weight before and I wasn't eating that much. For working out at home does any have good advice on a good home gym like a bowflex or something like that? I could spending between like 300-1,500 dollars on a machine would prefer the lower range if possible though but willing to spend more if needed.

Any other just general advice is appreciated I feel very good so far but I want to make sure I continue to loss weight and maintain a healthy diet.