Intro. and question concerning calorie intake and cal. loss through exercise

This is my first post here, but I am not new to weight loss or forums. I'm a 5'9 or 5'10 male, 28 years old, and about 165 pounds. I ballooned to 207lbs last year and in April of 2008, decided to start running and lost 23lbs in about 4 month span. Then went through a rough time towards the end of 2008 and gained about 8-10lbs back. Then starting in May of this year, changed diet and began running again and lost 23lbs. This is the smallest I have ever been, at least since I was a teenager. I have some questions concerning weight gain and calorie intake from personal experience.

I have been reading a Low Carb website and personally don't see how it works long term. A lot of people seem to lose a lot of weight cutting carbs but it seems as soon as you start eating them again, they gain the weight right back. It seems like no one really knows how the body loses weight, I know this is a calorie counting site but I don't understand how I can limit calories to maintenance for a week while running 35 miles and not lose a pound?

Another question from personal experience, does anyone here eat less carb's towards the end of the day? Does that have any bearing on weight loss, at least consuming them when they aren't going to get burned off? Also, if you eat 2,000 calories a day and burn off 1,000 so your net for the day is 1,000, does anyone know if that affects the body so that it slows metabolism down? I have kept my calories intake near maintenance but increased my run time and can't break my plateau. I don't understand how the body works. Someone please give me their experience with my questions. Thanks.

Low carb diets have their downsides and good points. Eating a low carb diet does not generally mean that you are going to gain it all back when you eat them again. The whole point of it is to cut out the bad sugars/carbs  and  reincorporate healthy carbs into your diet. Good carbs being veggies/wheat breads, wheat pastas, etc. None of that refined stuff. Many people have a tendency to go cold turkey with carbs which isn't the way to go, and then when they eat them again, have trouble with control because they body is craving them.

Only eating 2000 calories while burning 1000 isn't really good for your body. With such a high burn you need to jack up how much you eat. I am 6' male, 25, 167 pounds. I burn roughly 600-900 calories a day, and I shoot to eat around 2600 calories a day (though sometimes this doesn't happen). If you have a high burn you need to consume more calories or a plateau will happen and your body will try to keep your weight. 

Hope I helped at all

So sounds like the only exercise your doing is the running.  I would suggest adding some hypertrophic (google hypertrophy) strength training in.  Also,  for a sedentary male of your height and weight your bmr would be (edited replaced 2 with a 1)1800 calories.  So for maintenance im guessing, you should be eating around 2000-2400 calories(note this is a sedentary level meaning little to no activity).  Maintenance means your calories consumed per day is equal to the calories burned per day

  Low carb is not a long term solution in my opinion.  I have experienced this myself with the south beach diet.  I lost 13 pounds in 6 weeks  on phase 1 then when i started progressing to phase 2 and 3 i gained that back.  That is when i started looking into calorie counted.  Personal opinion here any diet where you have to buy something is garbage and probably doesn't work.

 I try to keep my deficit around 700-800 (i have 50 pounds to lose).  when you get closer to your goal you should decrease the deficit to 200-300 so your body gets used to what maintenance calories is supposed to feel like.   As to the carb question i try not to eat after 6 pm because I know im not going to be very active. 

I'm not real sure how the calculator you used says I can consume 2800 with light exercise but there's no way. Other BMI calculators say my BMR is about 1,800 plus exercise. Do you think 2,800 is too high?

Also, 165 puts you at a bmi of 23.7.  You can safely take off 10 more pounds for a bmi of 22.2.  This close to your goal i would try to gkeep a 500 calorie deficit so your body starts getting used to maintance calories.  At your activity level your burning around 2700 calories per day meaning you should be eating between 2000-2400 per day and maintance for you would be 2700

dnar99 has a good point with low carb diets.  What you really want to do is replace highly refined sugars, potato chips and white bread with healthy carbs.  I know that the 'South Beach' diet, cuts out carbs altogether for the first 2 weeks (not including veges) so that you can stop your body from craving bad carbs, and have an initial boost in losing weight.  But then you, very slowly, start adding good carbs back to your diet, and body adjusts to it without gaining weight.  People are different, however, and not everyone adjusts to this diet well.

Also, like jdunckel suggested, I would change up your exercise a bit.  I know that when I get really into running, the first couple of weeks I lose weight... up to 2 months even. But then my body adjusts to this kind of exercise.  It becomes more efficient, burning less calories for the same miles.  You need to up your intensity, throw in some sprints, or hills... or what really works is changing to a completely different sport or exercise.  This is a bummer for me, because I love running... oh well!

You can try interval running. You need a track or someplace where you can mark distances.  Here is a sample interval run:

run 800 jog 400 x 4for a total of 3 miles. Another thing is find a good hill around where you live(could be at a park jogging trail w/e). Run to the top jog/walk down x4 rest for 1 minute then do another 4 sets.  I have a head full of running workouts if you need help with increasing difficulty