Advice for a desperate lady!

This is just a suggestion, but if you were maintaining your weight (not losing) at whatever you were eating at 220 pounds and not counting calories, but assuming you were feeling satisfied and not hungry all the time, you can use your actual data to figure out your calories, which is much better than a calculator designed to accommodate the masses.

I would go back to eating whatever you were that allowed you to maintain at 220 pounds for about 3-4 weeks. Don’t change it - you’re goal is not to lose during that time, but to gain data. Weigh and record everything that you eat so you can see how many average calories you are consuming a day. I would actually take the data after each week, add the days together and divide by 7 for your average daily calories.

If you do this for 3-4 weeks and continue to weigh yourself, assuming you generally maintain over that time as you had been doing, you will know what your maintenance calories are - an INVALUABLE piece of knowledge.

Once you know that, you can start by reducing that by 250 calories a day (or whatever feels right to you, but remember slow sustainable habit changes). You will be eating at a deficit from maintenance so you should lose, but hopefully you will get enough calories to not feel hungry all the time.

FWIW - I am also 5’4 and I weigh about 120, about 100 pounds less than you, and I lose at 1800/day. I maintain at 2100/day or so. But I learned all that by tracking my own data.

MFP and other calculators are tools but they are not magic. Your own data is what is accurate for you, and if you have the patience to figure out you’d maintenance calories, you can really take control of your calorie deficit.