How do MFP's static and exercise calorie burns correlate?

livendive

I'm pretty new here, just about 3 weeks now (and down 11.5 lbs). I'm a 45 year old man, 6', was 241 lbs at the outset, and was coming out of a pretty sedentary (subjective term) two year span during which I was working full-time at a desk job and then studying at a desk all night for grad school. Although fat, I still have a reasonable amount of muscle mass under it all and wouldn't describe myself as a soft ball of butter...more like just slathered with butter.

At the outset, the program told me to cut down to 1550 calories per day which seemed a bit low for me as I was probably in the 3-4k/day range before this. That said MFP (or Endomondo) have been giving me suspiciously high calorie burns for brisk walking and running, e.g. nearly 700 last night for "walgging" 3 miles in 37 minutes in >90 degree heat. Today when I passed the 10 lbs lost mark, the app asked me if I wanted it to update my goals, I said yes, and then it cut me back to 1440 calories/day, which is only slightly more than what my 125 lb wife is shooting for.

My question is whether this is likely a result of my having said I'm sedentary, thereby telling the program that I burn less calories nominally and more calories when exercising than is actually the case. Any thoughts? If I upgraded that to moderately active or whatever, would MFP increase its estimation of my metabolism and decrease the credit I get for exercise?"

Also, it would be cool if the program could "learn" our nominal metabolism by watching intake and logged exercise to determine our nature calorie surplus/deficit as a result of unlogged burning. On the surface, this seems like it could be as simple as, "Okay, this month you consumed X calories, logged Y calories burned, and gained/lost Z weight, therefore your average daily calorie burn from unlogged activity (e.g. breathing, shopping, etc) is calculated to be ___"