Problems with logging and maintaining calorie intake

Pay attention to what you eat, when you eat, why you eat, and learn from that about how best to keep yourself full and happy.

What you eat: Everyone is satiated by different things. For some it's relatively more protein, for others it's fats, for yet others it's volume (often large amounts of high-fiber veggies), and for some it's carbs (especially complex carbs like baked potatoes or whole grains). It can even be specific foods. Even specific food sensations are important for some people (crunchiness or saltiness or lots of chewing, for example). It's common (though not universal) to find diets with mostly calorie-dense but not nutrient-dense foods to be not very satiating.

When you eat: Timing of eating for best satiation is also very individual. Different people find different timings of meals/snacks, or the timing of the caloric size of them, or timing of the nutrient composition, to be very important. Anything from grazing all day in small servings, to one giant meal daily, and everything in between, is someone's perfect schedule. To find yours, experiment. (Timing of eating with respect to exercise/exertion can also be important, for some.)

Why you eat: Many of us feel appetite/cravings for reasons not directly related to food. Some common things are habit, boredom, stress, lack of sleep, fatigue for other reasons, emotions, social situations, seeing other people eating, and more. If the root problem isn't really food, then the best solution isn't eating. We have to address the underlying triggers.

Your food diary can be a huge help in this. When you have an especially crave-y day, or an unusually satisfied one, look at your diary, and try to find patterns. What circumstances contributed to how you felt? If something(s) makes you crave-y, figure out how to avoid that. If something(s) kept you satisfied, try to do those things more often. Experiment with changes, and evaluate the results. Keep what works, reject what doesn't.

A couple of other things:

1. It's super common to feel hungry if you are too aggressive in picking a weight loss rate or calorie target. It can be easier for some to start by targeting 0.5 pounds/week for a bit, even with quite a bit to lose, just to phase into the process. In any case, unless under close medical supervision, it's potentially risky to lose more than about 1% of your current body weight weekly, and slower than that can be better if more sustainable, and that's especially true if within about 50 pounds of goal weight. Furthermore, over-restricting can backfire, either by binges, or via fatigue (that makes you move less so burn fewer calories in daily life).

2. If you're just starting, it's common to have a couple of weeks adaptation period where you feel more hungry. If you're not over-restricting, you may see this effect. It's still a good plan to look at the what/when/why of satiation, but you may also see improvement just by sticking with it through the difficulty for a couple of weeks, until new habits start to groove in.

Best wishes in finding a solution!