How many calories should I eat a day?

Start by cutting out 250 cals per day - do that for a couple of weeks as you get used to the new normal food amounts. Should get you about 1/2 lb per week. If that starts to get "easy" you can reduce another 100 or so cals at a time so the change isn't so extreme. If you were eating 3000 cals going to 1600-1800 is pretty drastic so it also might be a good idea to eat at maintenance (2145) for a few days as that is also a pretty significant amount.
Don't cut out food groups - just work on portions. Get a food scale and weight every solid and measure every liquid. Find out what mix works best for you. I do best with a fat/protein with a high fiber that I can have a decent volume of for relatively few calories at each meal. So I have yogurt with berries and nuts, veggies with a high protein dip like hummus or plain Greek yogurt mixed with a packet of salad dressing/dip mix, some cheese and nuts with apple slices for good filling snacks.
For meals I eat what my family eats just in controlled portions and maybe a few substitutions. For example I will skip the bread or split a roll with my son instead of having my own. I make Zoodles for me to either replace the pasta or to mix half and half so my portion is larger but a lot lower calorie.
Also don't use any of the fat-free stuff. Go for full fat yogurts and cheeses as they do tend to leave me more satiated.

Track what you're eating without making changes for a couple of weeks. You can't reduce how much you're eating if you don't know how much you're eating. Reduce my smaller increments.

If you were eating 3000+ calories a day and you are now only eating 1600-1800, that is a HUGE change. Almost half.

Remember that if you can't stick to it and you quit, you'll be no farther ahead than if you take it slow and make small manageable adjustments over time.

Have to provide some context for my idea of "what worked" for me... I'm female half-marathoner who runs 3x week, and cross/strength trains 2x week. I lost ~20 lbs. from my 5'8" frame, following the below. So, I was fairly active already, but eating too many carbs, and calories for my activity level (and let's face it, my age...)

I have gotten great results "eating to a weight" I call it...
1. Daily calories = Desired weight x 10 (e.g. in my case desired weight = 150 lbs. so, 150 x 10 = 1,500 daily cals)
2. Then follow 40% protein/30% carbs/30% fat (each g of protein and carbs has 4 cals, and each g fat has 9 cals)
3. Stayed at targeted daily calorie level whether I worked out or not, no extras because I burned more that day, in general. And, sometimes you're just ravenous!! In which case I will have more to eat, but it's something concentrated in protein or healthy fat.

And I agree with the previous poster on weighing...pick once a week in the morning...hold yourself accountable week to week.

Best of luck!!!

yoherbs421 wrote: »

melpidal wrote: »

I'm feeling super discouraged because I can't lose weight!! After 3-4 days eating 1600-1800 calories, I'm super hungry and just want to binge eat everything in sight. I'm obese and have always been this way since a teenager. I want to change and make it be a long-term change but feel so helpless and not sure where to start.

Wanna avoid being hungry! Water...all day drink it. When you feel hungry slam that water back. You might end up in the loo more often but losing weight matters here. Here losing weight is the only thing. Stick with it. Starting out and the initial struggle is the hardest. Stick it out.

Water is your best friend now!

more water is not always the answer,for some it wont satiate them and too much water can cause problems(electrolyte imbalance is one of them). if someones that hungry they need to see if fiber,fats,protein or carbs satiate them or a balance of all of the above. gotta find what works.

OP - it's awesome that you're motivated! The hard part is making a change stick. I'm only a few months into this, so by no means am I as experienced as some of the MFP veterans on here (who all seem to give awesome advice!), but here's what's worked/working for me:

-I started out the first few weeks basically logging what I was eating, even if I ate at maintenance over, without worrying too much about what the numbers were. I was 1000 calories or more over every week at first.
- I weighed in once a week on Wednesday mornings. Now, I weigh multiple times a week, whenever I feel like it, but I understand that the scale is a fickle thing and I only look at long term trends (a week or more). I have an excel tracker where I record data because I'm a nerd like that and I enjoy seeing progress. Every week feels like it's a slow loss, but when I look back to where I was last month, or when I started, I'm so proud of myself.
-I started going to the gym, and as I settled into a routine I calculated my estimated TDEE just to see where I was. I changed my actual daily goal to the estimated TDEE for a sedentary person at my goal weight using the logic of "if I couldn't work out at all, could I be happy eating at this level?". The answer was yes, and that got me 1850 at 5'7", starting out at 217lbs.
-Over time, I got better at logging. I eventually bought a food scale. I now log EVERYTHING, which allows me to end up eating more (yay!) and be confident in those numbers.
- I decided very early on that I would not cut out ANY food. The first six weeks or so, I had cheesecakes, chocolate cakes, snack cakes, beer, wine, etc. I tried to keep the portions reasonable (except for that one time in March, when I basically ate an entire cake by myself over several breakfasts. I was extremely delicious), but I didn't make anything off limits. Now, I really don't crave that stuff as much. I can still have it, I was even waiting for my monthly intense craving of a Fudge Round and Red Wine dinner, but it never came. I went from drinking 2+ bottles of wine over the week, to 1 bottle over a weekend, that I might not even finish. My point is that it's a SLOW change, and you might not even notice it happening, but the cravings and hunger do start to diminish as you start to front load your diet with healthier options.
-I read this thread. The entire thing. It's the most inspiring and motivating this on the entirety of the MFP forums. http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10087100/what-nobody-tells-you-about-losing-weight/p1

I've lost 19lbs in 3 months (hoping for that last 1 to get to my first mini-goal at tomorrow's weigh in!). It's slow, it's frustrating at times, but it's possible and YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MISERABLE to lose weight. I look at it like this: I'm going to be a year older no matter what I do. I might as well be a year older AND 50 pounds lighter. . .

Good luck, OP. Stick with it and don't give up!