I have no idea what portion sizes really are so I could be eating way worse than I think.
ANYWAY, I'm just here looking for others in the same boat and possibly get some encouragement. Hi!
Hello and welcome!
First thing you gotta do is know how much you're eating. I'd take 1 week, and write down everything you eat. Measure everything, and add up the calories. For example, don't just say you had a chicken breast or a bowl of cereal, say you had 6oz of chicken breast and 1/2 cup cereal. Once you know how many calories you're currently eating, you can figure out how much you can cut back to get the results you want.
It will be beneficial to learn about maintenance calories and determining what size calorie defecit you need to lose weight. Maintenance is the calorie level where you do not gain nor lose. If you've been at a consistent weight for a long time, you're average calorie intake is your maintenance level. If you eat more than maintenance, you gain weight. Less than maintenance, you lose weight. 1 lb of fat contains 3500 calories, so to force your body to use 1lb of fat as energy, you need to create a defecit of 3500 calories. In other words, if you eat 500 calories less than maintenance per day, you can lose a lb of fat per week. In general, you don't want to try to lose more than 1% of your body weight per week. If you weigh 200lbs for example, you don't want to lose more than 2lbs per week, and it gradually decreases as you lose weight.
There are a lot of stickies in the nutrition section and elsewhere that go into a lot more detail, but that is just to get you started.
