I'm trying to lose weight through eating less and cardio. I try to eat between 1200 - 1600 calories a day and do cardio to burn about 700. I calculated my at rest calorie usage to be about 2200. Assuming I eat 1600 in a day and burn 2900, I'm at a net loss of 1300. I've read some conflicting information and just wanted to see if this was healthy or if I should be eating more. Any info is appreciated, thanks!

You should be eating more. You should be eating around 2200. What you're doing now is putting your body in a starvation mode. That in turn will cause it to pack away fat at the expense of muscle and other tissue. You're actually going to be gaining fat like that and reducing the fitness of your body.

As well when your losing weight you need to be sure that you are aware of what is happening in your body. With the exercise you're going to be gaining muscle and losing fat, assuming a proper diet, and muscle is much more dense. This will lead to a kind of paradox. You will lose inches but not weight. Crazy eh? There have been cases when a woman wants to lost 10 pounds, gains 5, and loses the fat. The take home message here is don't measure your fitness based upon the scale. Take measurements around various places on your body and use that as a measure of fat lose. Your weight might fluctuate but your fitness will increase.

Does this make sense?

Let me say I am no a doctor nor an expert in this field, but my understanding is that a goal of weight loss of 1 pound per week is sustainable. This corresponds to 3500 Calories per week, or 500 Calaries per day, under your 2200 resting meatbolism. So - I think 1700 Calories/day of food intake would be a good long term goal. Burning 700/day with exercsie is a very ambitous goal - if you can maintain that you'll be in excellent shape!

Thanks for the input!