Need help with getting this diet on the go

Almost everyone here will tell you:
Starvation mode does not exist
Don't weigh yourself every day. It leads to frustration and scale addiction.
Eat at a reasonable calorie level for moderate weight loss.

Sorry for the generic advice. Hope you do well and succeed!

Please read the stickies at the top of this getting started forum. Then reread. You can lose weight eating 2000 calories a day because it is less than what your body burns daily. Weigh all solid food, measure all liquids. If you stop losing for MORE than a few weeks, then slowly drop your calories until you do. Don't lose too fast as you get further along, as you will likely lose muscle mass.

Again, please read the stickies; they made all the difference for me.

It just seems so strange. I've decided to go back to MFP's basic settings for losing weight at 2lbs a week and it feels like I'm not eating any less than what I used to eat. I was just making dinner and I struggled to find things to put in it to make up those last few calories. I don't get how I'm meant to lose weight from eating almost 2000 calories.

At 280 pounds, your body burns more calories in a day than someone who weighs 180 pounds. This is why you can lose weight at 2000 calories. Just make sure you weigh everything you eat/measure every liquid. And be patient...your weight will fluctuate constantly, and there will be many days where you don't lose or gain.

Whoops I accidentally posted this to another thread and meant to put it here so I'll just cut and paste and add a few more comments- here's the cut and paste:

weigh all solids and measure all liquids (except for things with zero calories like water)

be sure to use accurate entries from the database. When I am finding a new food I check and double-check it against several other sites and/or the package information to make sure I am selecting an accurate entry. After that I just use the entry in my history or favorites as I know it has been checked for accuracy. It takes a while at first but then goes faster as you go along and have to search less foods.

use raw weight on meats, and if you can't be sure to use cooked weight entries from the database. When you are a smallish person 100 calories a day makes a HUGE difference and you can easily mis-track this badly with one wrong database entry and 1 piece of meat.

Do not use listed calorie info for food you don't prepare yourself (restaurant/fast food/potlucks etc) and expect them to be accurate! If you absolutely cannot stand to stall out at times and don't have a lot to lose (therefore your calorie goals are relatively low) then you really need to track more accurately than food out is going to let you, unless you are going to carry around a food scale or take everything home, take it apart and weigh it before you eat it. And even then it won't be 100% accurate due to prep method variations.

The short answer is it's a lot easier to do this with a lot of patience and allowing yourself some experimentation over time to identify what works for you as an individual. Every single person will lose weight if they use up more calories than they ingest, but what keeps us able to eat less than what our body uses is different for everyone.

For example, I can easily (though slowly) lose weight steadily on 2,200 calories a day. If my target calories is 1900 and I mis-track by 200 calories that's not such huge proportional error, and doesn't even take me above "maintenance" calories for the day. It will slow my weight loss but not stop it. Of course I am fat, so I burn a lot of calories. If you are really short and don't have a lot to lose you may need to net 1400 calories a day to lose weight, thus a 200 calories mis-track can set you back twice as long as for me!

The point is accuracy and tracking trends over time (a month or more) is going to be the best way to assess your plan. If you track accurately and after 5 weeks haven't lost anything that likely means you are eating too much and need to eat less to be in a deficit (barring medical issue as others have mentioned).

Also don't over-estimate your exercise calories.

And here's the other comments:

I lost quite a bit too first starting out then it evened out. You cannot expect the beginning of this to look like the middle, and it doesn't mean you "stopped" losing. As mentioned you need to look at trends over time, as in weeks, or months. If you stick to accurate tracking and taking in more than you use the scale will eventually go down.

I do happen to weigh every day (often multiple times a day) but I do it for data collection, not because I expect the scale to go down. As you read around here you will often see mentioned none of us as a set weight, we each have a weight range. What I am looking for is my weight range to go down. So if (for example) a week ago I would see anything from 236-230 on the scale and now I will see anything from 228-234 I know I am slowly going in the downwardly direction.

ETA: go home me, you're drunk. That next to last bit should say taking in LESS than you use, not more.