Welcome, Brandon. At your age, height, and weight, your basal metabolic rate (BMR, or the calories you burn just existing) comes to about 2,500 calories a day. Your BMI is 29.0, which is overweight, but not obese.
The first thing I would recommend is studying the forum here. In particular, look for a regular named Steve, who has a cornucopia of good advice. There is another regular, Leigh, who usually posts in the "Harsh Truth" forum. Between the two of them, you will go a long way toward getting that education you mentioned.
Basically, if you are running an energy deficit, you will lose weight. In other words, if you BMR is 2500 calories, and you only eat and drink 2,000 calories a day, you will lose about a pound a week. It won't really make a difference when you eat those calories, or what the calories consist of.
However, it is a lot easier and certainly much healthier if the calories you do consume are high quality calories -- real food, and mostly plants. If you eat bread, try to make sure it's the whole grain variety.
Hopefully, you are exercising as well. If you are, then it's best to figure that into your "energy equation", so that your average daily deficit takes that into account. If you run a daily deficit of around 500 calories or so, that will give you a healthy weight loss without cutting into your muscle too much.
So the answer to your immediate question is, IMO, that 1,500 calories a day is too little for you, especially if you are exercising. You will just screw up your metabolism that way.
