Okay, lets take this one step at a time. Yes, I'll agree that you may lose weight at your current weight if you cut your calories to 2000 - if you are active with exercise. I see that you just indicated that you are not. The simple fact, shyla, to lose weight you have to become active. I'm not disagreeing that a person can't lose weight simply by dieting. But I don't agree with, and never will agree with, this method. The scale is not an indication of your progress. All it tells you is the pounds lost but not what those pounds are made of. You have to lose fat - NOT muscle. Muscle tissue is the most precious asset you have and you have to maintain that at all costs. The simple reason being that fat is the preferred fuel of muscle and the more muscle you have, the more fat you will burn. I repeat, it is fat you want to lose - not pounds. There is a big difference.
Now you just asked: "
I had read that you can calculate calories needed per day by taking your goal weight x 12 (if you're not really that active), which in my case would be 175 x 12 = 2100 cal. Is that not right?"
No, that is not right. In my first post I refered to your RMR which is your resting metabolic rate. This is simply the number of calories you need each day to be you. If you just lay around all day and did nothing, you would still burn calories and that is your RMR. On top of that you need calories to move about. There is also a third catagory that's not important at this time that has to do with the thermogenic effect of food (TEF) but we won't worry about that for now.
There is an excellent online calculator
here that you can use to calculate your RMR. It takes the average of five different methods. Once you have that figure, run the calculations again at your desired weight. Now if that figure at the lower number is not more than 10% less than the current figure, use that as a rough calorie guideline. You don't want to drop too drastically and put your body in "survival" mode. Remember too that these figures are only your RMR and don't account for daily activity, so you may have to up them, especially if you feel drained during the day and feel like you have no gas in your tank. But by all means, shyla, get active! I know this is a lot of information. Anything not clear, feel free to ask!