Higher Calories?

I have encountered a lot of information within the past few days stating that I am simply not eating enough calories to lose weight. Yeah, that's right! Not ENOUGH calories. With having consumed about 1200 calories a day and with exercising, apparently it has put my body in starvation mode. So I am tweaking my calorie consumption and upping it to about 1500 calories a day. I always thought that it was good to eat about 1200 calories AND burn extra calories. Apparently this is not enough calories to run the body as it should and so the body goes into survival mode, holding onto fat. I'm interested in what this will do. Wow, what a treat it would be to know that I could actually up my calories and still lose. Looking back, there were times I dreaded getting on the scale because of what all I'd ate. Then I'd be surprised to see that I had lost a little. Could this had been why? Hmm....