I've found it to be important to optimize your diet for satiation, too. If you eat a lot of junk food, it's going to be a struggle to keep to 1500 calories.

A good meal for weight loss, in my experience, is a modest portion of a lean protein (e.g. fish or chicken), a large vegetable portion, and a small amount of carbs (maybe toast or a roll). A lot of my meals are based on that formula and it keeps me full until the next meal for maybe half the calories of a burger and fries.

My plan was to lose weight without thinking about it too much - just adjusting my habits instead of counting calories every day; weighing in occasionally and tweaking my routine based on results. It's been successful so far.