Maybe I'm crazy but....

If you were being honest with your activity levels (which is why I like exrx.net and health-calc.com, because they allow you to enter in time spent doing activity of different intensities), and if you're quite heavy (not meaning to be rude, of course, but I'm assuming this is the case as your goal is to lose almost 200lbs) then this is likely an accurate starting point.

I'm 5'7, 175lbs, workout ~5 hours a week, and my estimated TDEE is as high as 2600 cals (which is what I'm using as my maintenance/TDEE, as when I was eating at deficits based on lower TDEEs for the same activity level, I was showing some symptoms of undereating - nothing serious but just a bit of crabbiness and moodiness). 2100 works just fine for me to lose weight.

Well I'm 5'5 and currently weigh 261 (sorry for being an airhead and not thinking about that before!!)
I go to the gym 5-6 times a week and do a mix of cardio and weights.

I do have a food scale and use it religiously

the days that I've missed most recently have been due to frustration but I can promise I havent gone and binged like crazy.. I've just eaten normal like i do every other day.

Thanks everyone!

I just calculated yours using scooby's calculator (a quick one that many people agree to be fairly accurate for most people) and depending on how many hours you spend working out in a week (an hour each day? less? longer?) the numbers you got and posted at the beginning are close to what I got for you. How many calories are you usually eating right now on average? Like in a week, if you look at your consumption, average it out for a week where you know you were being consistent with logging. You might want to try adding 100 calories a week (or every few days if you're up to it) until you reach ~2400 calories. Although I'd definitely recommend that you give the exrx.net calculator a shot, just to see how it lines up wtih whichever calculator you did use. But once you reach your estimated TDEE-20% mark, eat that amount for a month and monitor. If you've gained weight, drop the calories by 100 and monitor again for a few weeks, keep lowering until you see losses.

Since you are heavy, your body does need quite a few calories. If you're eating on average 1400 calories a week, that's a good ~50% or more deficit from your estimated needs. Which is obviously far too much. All of these calculators (including the numbers MFP gives to you, although MFP is even worse because it just subtracts 500 calories for every lb you want to lose instead of calculating it by percentages) are estimates, so you need to start with one that is reasonable for your weight and activity levels, and test it out for a while.

The next disheartening piece is I've just been going by the range that mfp has given me, i feel like i'm eating and snacking almost all day... and I'm never hungry. but as Ana stated i'm clearly under eating.... so, how do i eat more without gaining back?

Already mentioned above, but a good way to do this would be to add 100 calories every week. But if you want to be really cautious about it, add 100 and monitor for a few weeks until you feel confident that you haven't gained any weight back, then add another 100, monitor.. keep doing that until you reach a point where you are still losing ~1lb a week (if it's a bit more, that's fine, but 2lbs a week is really not sustainable for most people after they've lost much initial water weight).

Ideally, you want to be losing weight on as much food as possible to cause as little metabolic and general damage as possible. And also to minimize gaining the weight back, since you'll find that your maintenance needs are far more acceptable.

ETA we may have similar activity levels (yours might even be higher!) but I'm eating more food than you are to lose weight, and I weigh less than you. Definitely says something about the fact that you don't need to eat very little to lose weight! And since you use a food scale, if you're weighing your food and using correct nutritional info (raw for things weighed raw, cooked for things weighed cooked) then your logging should be fairly accurate for your consumption.

MFP uses net calories, so its' your calories without exercise. If you'd like, you could even just try eating back 50% of your exercise calories every time you exercise, even fi you don't want to (you could throw in some PB or a few pieces of chocolate!), and see how that affects your weight over the next few weeks