My naturopathic physician has this machine that she uses to evaluate a number of things, one of which is basal metabolic rate. BMR is basically the number of calories that your body burns just staying alive. Mine is about 1600 and my naturopath says that I should not go below about 1300 calories if I am trying to lose weight and not cause my metabolism to slow. I would focus on carb counts more than calories and do what you can to stay right around 20. The calories should take care of themselves. Make sure that the carbs you are taking in come from healthy sources like veggies. Have faith in the plan, follow it properly, and you should do just fine. Remember that eating highly refined carbohydrates may well be the cause of your overeating so avoiding them should really help you to develop a better relationship with food. The key to success is finding a way of eating that will allow you to lose weight AND maintain that loss. Eating hardly anything is not a way of eating that you can maintain for life. You CAN do this!!