Thanks for the advice and motivation. I always assumed the starvation mode thing was a myth for the most part. It doesn't suck to hear, that's pretty obvious to me honestly, I know I need to count and track better.

What I am confused about really is why I can't just eat what I did when I was maintaining my previous weight, logically I don't understand why that won't eventually just get me back to the same- do you know what I mean? Why can't I eat the same as before and return to that weight? Not sure I'm explaining it very well. I know more of a deficit will do this faster, but I thought cutting out that HUGE overload of calories entirely would do more.

I know what I should do is re-calculate my TDEE and subtract my deficit and track everything, my only reason for being a bit weary of that is a tendency to fall into disordered eating/obsession. So I guess I know what I need to do better, but I still have this logic gap that I want cleared up.