So, feeling hungry isn't right - is that right?

First things first. Everyone feels very hungry the first week of a diet. We're just used to eating more food than we're suddenly getting. You have to give it at least a few weeks before getting concerned about this.

Now, as to your question, you'll get much better and more detailed comments from others, but I do have one little insight for you from my 16 months of dieting. I started at 320 lbs, am now at 240, and am in the middle of a month off, which may actually become 2 months off, because I'm really enjoying the time-out and, so far, haven't been gaining, so I feel little need to jump right back on the bandwagon.

Anyway, i you eat at a calorie deficit you ARE going to be hungry sometimes. Whether you eat pasta or chocolate cake, or piles of vegetables, whether you try to engineer your macros or completely ignore them, feeling hungry is part of being in a calorie deficit. You are literally feeding your body less than it needs to maintain its weight, and it has an entire arsenal of hormones and other subsystems which evolved over millions of years to use internal signaling to push you to eat. That's what "hunger" is.

What you DO have control over is how you respond to the hunger signals. It took me a long time to figure this out, but, and here is my little, two-bit insight: "It's OK to be hungry". Not every hunger pang needs to be responded to, and as you get your brain and body to accept that its various signals will not be rewarded with food, they will stop whining so much.

In my case I started intermittent fasting, which I am not necessarily recommending here, just noting that in my case it helped a lot. The 16 hrs per day - later 17 - that I go completely without food of any kind forced me to come to terms with feelings of hunger and cravings, which were kinda brutal for a few weeks but then quieted down and after around 6 weeks all but stopped. I learned that, at least for me, the body stops bothering to nag for food when no food is forthcoming. Or perhaps more accurately, the mind gets better at just ignoring the nags; maybe they're still there, below the level of active awareness, I don't know. I rarely feel hungry anymore, even during my 17 hour fasts, which take place 29 days a month. In fact I'm less hungry during fasting times than feeding times.

All's I'm saying is, tough out the hunger for a few weeks, never give in, even a little, and you may surprise yourself in suddenly barely even noticing that you're hungry in a few weeks, or a month. At that point, sticking with a moderate/mild calorie deficit will become easy.

I'm going to have to disagree a bit with igrie about feeling hungry. You don't need to feel stuffed to the gills, but you shouldn't be hungry all day every day - this is the quickest way to have a 'diet' fail.

There is a difference between actually being hungry, and just feeling like you could eat if food was offered. If a big plate of vegetables sounds good, chances are you are hungry - if only a brownie sounds good, chances are you are just craving food. Cravings need to be managed, but hunger can be fulfilled.

You can certainly make your calories work for you (it's not cheating!) by swapping calorie-dense items for low-calorie options; such as vegetables, popcorn, or swapping for lower calorie alternatives (the real MVP is sour-cream-substitute greek yogurt!). A lot of people on low calorie budgets (relative to, say a 6ft man) use high-volume foods to stretch every calorie out. It's a "value for money" approach.

If you simply create a deficit by eating the exact same way you did before, but eat less, then chances are you won't be getting the volume of food you are used to, therefore will feel hungry. If this is what is sustainable for you mentally, then go ahead but you will have to readjust your expectations on how full you will feel.

Most people go for a 'middle of the road' approach, swapping some higher-value items for lower-value items, but still keeping the 'fun' foods. This is the approach I take, and it means i'm never hungry (except when it's actually time to eat), but i'm also never gorging on food.

A quick look at your diary shows one day (20 Sept) you ate roughly 300 calories from (what looks like) 4 dates and 300 calories in olive oil - you could have swapped that for two more sandwiches! A lot of your other days are quick-ads so it's hard to judge if this is typical for you.

Lastly, if you are using a food scale and are logging accurately, your rate of loss may be too aggressive for your goal depending on your body stats. If you start losing too rapidly, your CO might be higher than MFP can predict and you may need to up your calories again.

I reckon, looking at your diary, you could do with a bit more "filler". Vegetables, salad, carrot sticks, snacking tomatoes.
Personally I don't like feeling hungry but I am accepting a little rumble if I know lunch is coming up in an hour.

I’m also on team no hunger. Being hungry isn’t sustainable for me. Being hungry before a meal? Sure. But just accepting that I’m going to be hungry? No. That makes me angry, resentful and likely to binge.

I’m satisfied by a volume of food. The number of calories in that amount of food is irrelevant to whether or not I’m hungry before/after that meal. Meaning-I can consume well over my TDEE in a meal and still be hungry or well under and be satisfied. A calorie deficit has nothing to do with it.

For me to not be hungry, I tend to eat a lot of low calorie/high volume foods (vegetables, salads) and a good chunk of fiber (veggies and things like beans/lentils). I’m not one who finds protein and fat filling (but many do).

I also save a few calories each day and “bank” them so I have more freedom one day a week. I typically have oatmeal for breakfast as I find that very filling. I happen to enjoy donuts but they aren’t very filling. If I had a donut for breakfast (same calories as my oatmeal), I would be ravenous an hour later. Doing that isn’t really sustainable for me. So I save some calories Each day and one day a week I’ll have a donut for enjoyment and some oatmeal so I don’t end up gnawing off my arm before lunch.

Hunger isn’t necessary. You don’t need to be hungry or accept hunger as part of the process. You do need to accept that if you want to avoid being hungry, you’ll need to experiment with food and food timing to find what helps keep you from being hungry.

There is a thread in the food section with thousands of ideas from “volume eaters” (people who need a certain volume of food to feel satisfied) of various ways they are eating a greater volume of food for fewer calories. That might give you some ideas to start?

Averages are just that. Averages.

What stands out to me is headache and constant hunger.

You only have a little to lose.

There's no rule to say that your maintenance cannot be well over 2K Calories.

Only longer term logging and comparing expectations to weight trend results can tell you what your "real" calories are.

If you're intensely hungry when not starting from a position of a lot of weight to lose for health reasons... I would reconsider what I'm doing and slow down.

There are worse things than ending up eating at maintenance and not achieving weight loss right away.

Also don't forget to account for and differentiate between one time weigh ins and longer term weight trend changes.