A couple of Questions...

Our bodies are amazing machines, and can adapt to almost any situation. This is usually a good thing, but in the case of too few calories it can be bad. When you shave off calories, the body has to stop giving energy to parts of the body, the parts that are deprived are usually parts we want to build (like muscle, organs, and bone) and the parts we want to shrink are perceived as vital storage areas and are kept up or increased (like fat reserves), logically this makes sense, but it's not what we want to happen.

You may feel like you're eating enough, but that's most likely because you, for so long, have been eating either too few, or not nutritionally healthy types of calories. It may take a few weeks or a month to become used to higher calorie intake, especially when you do it right nutritionally and every calorie works for you, but eventually, your body will account for the new intake, and you'll feel better about it. And when that happens, your metabolism will rise, you're fat reserves will be given a lower priority, and your muscle, bone, and organs will all become healthier.

One way to combat the feeling of "fullness" is to break up your meals into smaller ones that you eat more often throughout the day. I have 7 to 8 meals a day of 350 to 600 calories usually, it means that I'm never stuffed, but I also almost never feel hungry (I require 2800 cals a day just to maintain).

You should try to eat as many calories as it allows you because it will help with your weight loss and going over a little on protein is not bad as long as you don't go way over. Protein is good for you its just that when you get way to much that its not good.

1500 calories go a lot farther when your eating healthy food, which is why you feel like your having a hard time. For an example, a bigmac is about 540 calories. Thats almost 5 plain turkey sandwiches. Healthier foods in general tend to be lower in calories in higher in protein and fiber so they'll fill you up a lot faster than say a big mac.

try planning your meals the night before, which should help prevent you from having a bunch of calories left over late at night. Try eating foods like peanut butter, nuts, avocados, and cheese which are high in calories yet still nutritious. Its going to take a little practice before you can better gauge how far your calories will go.

As for protein, this is come up a few times before and most people agree that the mfp protein count is too low. as long as your protein is not astronomically high, then its not a big deal if you go over. i think fat and sodium intake are things you should be more concerned about.

And i respectfully disagree khool. I think that most (not all) people on this site have had the most success with eating their exercise calories. When i go running, i can burn up 1000 calories in a workout, which is completely impractical for me to eat all of so i try to eat about half of it. If you really can't eat them, then don't force it. Again, pre-planning is the key here. if you know you're going to be working out that day, then add calories throughout the day so your not left with a ton of calories later. If you can't eat all of them, then try to eat at least half.

hope some of this helped
aisha

when i did the recommended, it said i was supposed to eat somewhere around 1400+ calories...i bumped that down to 1200 calories a day and dropped 5lbs the first week (i know its mostly water weight but still felt good) so try lowering it a little bit?