excercise and eating

Often when your calorie intake it too low, your metabolism slows down and this can make it harder to lose weight. Clearly this isn't happening to you now, but it could happen in the future. The exercise is likely helping. If you hit a plateau in the future on the same plan, you may actually need to start eating more.

What kind of exercise are you doing burning 900 calories? How long and what? I think there may be a miscalculation there somewhere. Id check that out before adjusting any calories.

I never really thought to count calories before i started the diet and exercise. and the 2600 is what mfp is telling me i need to eat for an exercise day which just seems really high and i would have to over double the calories that im taking in now. and my energy level is higher than it was when i was not doing either.

the 900 calories is from me doing insanity on my days off from the gym which today was a 60 minute interval training workout and i am using a polar ft7 hrm to get my calories burned from and from what i have read it is a pretty accurate way to do it. Also i do not burn 900 every day that is usually just the days i do the insanity workout.

I also intake on some days more that the 1000 calories probably closer to 1200 - 1300 its just some days i do not feel that hungry. i will try and consume more calories i was just doing this because i had a nutritionist that is a friend of a friend tell me what i was doing was ok and that i didnt need to eat all the calories i burned back.

First, most nutritionist use a system that has been very standard where you figure out a daily goal that INCLUDES your planned exercise routine on a weekly basis, get avg daily, take deficit.

So for that method, they are correct.

But notice how MFP is different. Daily goal no exercise, take deficit. When you work out you eat more.
Turns out the same when you look at the week, unless you miss workouts. Then MFP works better.

HRM is likely very inaccurate for you.
Any idea what your HRmax stat is? The default it uses is 220-age. Ever gotten up to that HR in Insanity and didn't have to stop instantly and almost puke? If you did, that is probably your max then. If you didn't, it's higher, and you are being given inflated calorie burn.

Also, since Insanity is mostly trying to do intervals, some in anaerobic range, the HRM is very over estimating that, since it's intended for steady state aerobic HR range only, for calorie estimates anyway.

And yes, most folks have no idea how much they use to eat.

Pick out a couple of fast food meals you use to eat frequently and see how much was in it. Add some common snacks. You'll usually get the idea that 1200 used to be in 1 meal.

You only have to cut 1000 calories from what you used to eat, if you were at the point of maintaining before.

Well the max heart rate that I got to was 175 during this workout and it does use the age formula but how inaccurate could that be when it co es to the calories? And also before I bought this I was looking at what others have seen from coin. Insanity and some were around a thousand so it doesn't seem like its to far off when I was asking all out with the work out the whole 60 minutes. Also you can change your max if you know what it is. Are there any other ways to get more accuracy with it if its causing that big of a problem. I bought it so I could get a decent estimate for my workouts.
And your saying drop a thousand calories so the roughly 1200 that I eat is probably were I should be and its probably plus or minus 100 or so depending on some measurement.

I'm hoping at the least that 1200 is base calories that you eat on top of for your exercise, but for males, even that's too low.
1500 is the recommended bottom level for safety reasons. But just like minimum building codes, it's for safety, not for longevity, performance, or aesthetics. Plus it's intended for Sedentary.

HRmax has almost half the bearing in the formula's.
VO2max has almost the other half. If that's not a stat, then age and HRmax is used to estimate it.

So 196 if you fell within range. Luckily for us, as males, we do indeed have better chance of being within 10 bpm than outside that range. Sadly women almost opposite.

Anyway, despite estimate, you could have a diesel or a Honda heart, slow and powerful or fast and light. Genetics.

If you held at 175 for a whole 60 min, and your real HRmax was 210, that actually isn't that much of a workout to you, 83% of max.
Now, if HRmax was really 185, then that was one intense workout for you, 95% of max (and couldn't sustain for 60 min, so bad choice of example numbers, but point is true).

So it has a big bearing on calorie burn estimates.

Sadly, most examples of calorie burn are going to be coming from folks that have HRM's that have terrible formula's for estimating calorie burn, and/or don't have them set up correctly with their stats.
Ask your friends list, and if over 20 people, wouldn't be surprised if you asked who updated their HRM with their new weight, probably 5 would have forgotten. Or used to regularly forget until they got into a habit.

Spin bike ads at the gym have the same claim, you can burn up to 1000 calories an hr in class. That's great if possible. For starters, too bad the sessions are only 45 min not 60. Secondly, with 5 min warm up and 5 min cool down, so only 35 of potentially hard riding. 3rd, to actually ride at that level is incredibly difficult.

Anyway, claims are interesting.

So, here is couple methods to get your HRmax value, puke test and submaximal test. Since you enjoy pushing yourself, the puke test may actually be fun and interesting, though fun may not be the word to use. Near the end of the post is other test methods. 1 mile walk is interesting.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/466973-i-want-to-test-for-my-max-heart-rate-vo2-max

And then to test your HRM for decent accuracy, walking level 3-4 mph has been found to be more accurate by calculator than by HRM. It literally takes so much energy to move so much mass so fast, and unless you have a club foot or walk super efficiently compared to everyone else, very valid.

So use this site to see what walking level at 4mph should burn for you. Then test before your next workout. 5 min warmup so HR settles back down, then do it for say 15 or 20 min. This will tell you how far off the HRM is. Oh, the HRM would be reporting Gross. But for purpose of eating back exercise, it would be Net.

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

Fun test here too, fiddle with the incline and walking speeds up to what you can actually do, and see how much incline you'd need to get 1000 calories in 60 min. And then try it for 10 min and see if you could really hold out.
I'd have to do 3.9 mph at 14% grade. I might test that out to see how bad that is, but pretty sure 60 min ain't going to happen.

And finally, because I want to remind you of your worst homework days during school, here is a spreadsheet link in this topic post that has a HRM tab you should check out, especially if your HRM does have VO2max stat. And if it doesn't, that HRM tab has a Polar funded study formula that uses VO2max and you can get your own personal calorie burn chart. Also has some links for estimating HRmax too, calculator for estimating VO2max better than submaximal test, ect.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/750920-spreadsheet-for-bmr-tdee-deficit-macro-calcs-hrm-zones

Have fun with it. No due date, no need to show work either. ;-)