How to get through the initial struggle when you start a low-calorie diet?

I'm new to the weight loss scene. I'm a 5'11", 25-year-old woman with a starting weight of 234 lbs. I initially gained a lot of weight in 2020 and 2021 due to a combination of starting mental health medications, extremely decreased physical activity due to the pandemic, and a series of injuries that made exercise difficult and harmed my mental health, leading me to turn to food to cope.

There are several reasons I want to lose weight (re-gaining my health, feeling good in my body, all that good stuff), but the most pressing reason is that I want to get a surgery in order to deal with one of my chronic pain conditions, which would make it easier for me to be physical and make me significantly less miserable, but my insurance won't cover it unless my BMI is below 30. I need to lose 20 pounds to make that cutoff, and I would like to continue losing weight beyond that point, but I would like to lose those first 20 pounds much more quickly than is often encouraged for getting started with weight loss because I'd like to get that surgery sooner rather than later, especially because I have less than a year left on my parents' insurance before I'll have to switch to my workplace's less comprehensive insurance plan.

In order to do this, I've started by cutting my calorie intake to 1000 a day and trying to make better food choices (more veggies, lean protein, limited carbs, everything cooked/prepared at home). The first day and a half I felt hungry often, but nothing I couldn't handle.

I'm now on day 3 and I feel like absolute trash. I have absolutely no energy, I'm short-tempered, have a low-grade headache, brain fog I can't shake and it takes a significant energy push just to stand up. I'm sure that this is largely to due with this quick decrease of calories, and I don't want to crack and go past my calorie count, wasting the work I've done so far and depriving me of the motivation to keep going. From reading others' stories, I see that things get better for the majority of people once their bodies get used to the limited calories, but I feel so awful right now that I want to make this as easy as possible to ensure I stick with it. Does anyone have any advice as to how to ease the fatigue/struggle of the early days?

submitted by /u/TillyH81
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