Without knowing how tall you are, it's hard to know what is a realistic calorie intake for you.
I am 5'11", so if I maintain an active lifestyle, and eat about 2000 cals per day, I will eventually move down to a healthy weight, and maintain that weight over time. There are "daily maintenance calorie calculators" on the web (search google) that you can use as guidelines for your body. Just remember that they are guidelines, estimates, not set in stone. You may have to move the numbers up or down to adjust to you specifically.
The traditional advice is to find your maintenance calories for each day ignoring any exercise you do but including how active you are outside of exercise (i.e. steelworkers would be extrememly active, accountants would be sedentary). Then, add the cals burned from the exercise you do. This is how many calories you need to eat to neither gain nor lose weight. From this total, subtract 500 to lose 1 pound/per week, 1000 to lose 2. (It is not generally advised to try to lose more than 2 per week.)
It is not generally needed (or useful) to go down to 1200 cals unless you are very short or very sedentary. And in fact, there is anecdotal evidence that weight loss might be more difficult if calorie intake is brought down too low. (This is a debated issue.)
I say, why suffer and make losing weight harder than it needs to be. Get some exercise, eat some more, take your time. The weight will still come off, but since you are doing it sensibly, you'll be less likely to give up and quit altogether, and more likely to keep the weight off when you have hit your maintenance weight.
Good luck!
Of course, this isn't the ONLY way to do this, but it's the one that is working for me.
Calorie Cycling
) I don't know that it really prevents plateaus, but I began eating this way during one that ended shortly after I started, and I haven't had one since- could be or probably is a coincidence. However, I do know that I appreciate the higher cal days, as they give me a chance to eat with a little more freedom, and I don't mind the lower cal days. So I'm much happier with this method than always eating 2000.
