First, find out if you have problems metabolizing sugar. If you do, the traditional advice to eat a high carb, low fat (HCLF) diet are probably exactly the wrong thing for you. You can easily test yourself for around $20, by buying a glucose monitor with some included test strips at your drugstore. On a typical day, measure your fasting glucose. Then eat a breakfast that has a fair amount of carbs, e.g. oatmeal with fruit. Test yourself at 1 hour and then at 2 hours. If your glucose levels top 140 at any point, then it's an indication that you may have a problem with too many carbs in your diet.

This is not the case with everyone, but it is the case with a significant percentage of the population, and an even bigger portion of overweight and obese people. If you fall into this group, eating the traditional HCLF diet will probably be a never ending exercise in futility. There are tons of books on low carb, high fat diets, but this is one of the best I've read. The last 40 years of HCLF nutrition information has been a huge experiment, largely supported by poor science. If you're interested in a detailed history of how we came to this point, here's a good video on the subject.

I also agree that a 1,000 calorie a day deficit is very high. Especially if you are doing 4 to 6 hours of strength training per week, you risk using your muscles as a source of fuel. It took you years to put on the weight; you have to live with the fact that it will take you years to take it off. Moreover, you can't sustain that sort of deficit for very long. The key to "diet" is transforming the way you eat from a short term "fix" to a lifelong way of eating.

With that in mind, you have to remember that expecially if you have problems metabolizing carbs, it's no longer a simple "calories in-calories out" measurement. The sugar that your body can't metabolize will be stored as fat, and the sugar "highs", followed by the "lows" will cause you to be hungrier all the time.

You have to do your own research. There's lots and lots of crap out there (and I freely admit that HCLF advocates consider my opinion crap). There's also a huge financial incentive for our current USDA policies, which have enriched the coffers of Cargill, ConAgra, PepsiCo, and the rest of the agribusiness giants.

Good luck and congratulations on taking the first steps!