MFP thinks you're on maintenance or thereabouts because of the number of calories you're consuming. I don't think there's any way round that - you just have to ignore the message!

I used to have mine set at TDEE cut amount MINUS about 200 cals so that I could log in/eat back my exercise. Some part of me wanted to hold on to the ability to track calories burned through working out SO BAD. Although that method has not necessarily NOT working, I still thought it would be more accurate to just set it at my TDEE cut amount and try to be content with just logging my exercise in my notes, we'll see how this goes!

My BMR is 1760 and my TDEE is 24200, so I have been eating 1800 calories on most days. I do log my exercise though and sometimes I eat back some of my exercise calories. However, I do not exercise every day. On my rest days, I often only eat 1500 or 1600, so it ends up evening out at the end of the week. I wonder if my TDEE is figured correctly, or what. When I click the button, MFP tells me that I will be 220 in 5 weeks on days that I eat right at 1800. So far, I have been averaging 2 pounds per week, so I can't complain yet.

I set MFP at my Sedentary TDEE less 15%. Then eat back all of my exercise calories tracked with a HRM. I find that I'm more motivated to exercise if I can 'eat more' by working hard.

I ignore the message too...

I am right there with you on wanting to log the exercise calories. I just got a HRM and now know what Im burning and feel I want "credit" for it. I have been doing what you are now doing, set to cut TDEE and not logging exercise. I guess Im not content with it since I keep seeing that I will weight the same in 5 weeks. I know it cant be true, but its still a bummer. Its so much more motivating to log in exercise. I want to go back to logging exercise, I posted this in hopes to find out the best way.

But if you know it's not true, why do you still let it affect you? MFP calculates in a totally different way. It thinks that if you don't have a calorie deficit, you're not losing weight. However your deficit has already been calculated for you in your cut number. So it really really doesn't matter what MFP says, I promise!!

You can turn off the "complete this diary" setting and you won't get the message.

And if you're really desperate to log your exercise calories, you could put them in at the very, very end of the day after you've finished eating, so they don't affect your calorie target whilst you're still trying to hit it. I do that while on cut, on the off chance that I haven't netted BMR and need to eat a little more before bed.

At the moment I'm eating at maintenance, so I still log my exercise, but use a calorie burn value of 1 and then just put the real burn in the notes section, so that's an alternative too.

A lot of this journey is mental... the EM2WL philosophy changes a lot of our long-time beliefs about "dieting". We work on our bodies but we work on the mental stuff too so numbers don't bother us, unfortunately this includes the dreaded scale

I have mine set up in, quite possibly, the most confusing way ever. Lol. I'll try to explain:

First I calculated my TDEE on three different sites for two different activity levels one for day's that I work and one for my days off.
Then I took the SMALLEST number, which for me is 1800 (day off) and set that as my calorie goal.
On days that I work, I wear my HRM and at the end of my shift I take that number, cut it in half (because HRM are not meant for when you're not actually exercising, so the full number is probably no where near accurate) then I log those calories as exercise.
This usually brings me up to about 2100/day.....which is very close to the TDEE I got on all three sites for days that I work.
I then eat back my calories and call it a day. Lol.

So for days that I don't work, 1800 is my TDEE.....but I just toss in a really good cleaning day at the house and still eat 2100 lol.

Now I haven't been doing this for long at all (only since this Sunday haha!) but on Sunday I weighed 149.7 and this morning I weigh 147.2.....so I must be doing something right. Lol. I'm going to keep this up for two weeks and see what the results are and modify from there if I need to.

Also, I don't complete my diary ever as MFP figures my maintenance calories are 1750....so MFP would very likely tell me that I would gain in five weeks. I don't know about you, but that's not a message I'm interested in hearing at the end of every day! Haha!

I should also mention, that since so far I'm losing weight quite quickly, at the end of my two week experiment I may actually increase my intake to 2200-2300, because I may have calculated my TDEE wrong (judging by how quickly the scale is dipping and since I'm technically eating AT my TDEE I shouldn't be losing weight at all lol) but we'll see. So far I feel pretty great eating 2100 calories a day.

My MFP is set up at 'Maintenance' for lightly active. So basically my TDEE. My Fitbit does all the adjustments to make sure it is my correct TDEE each day (more like extremely crazily active -- average about 2800 at the moment).

What I do is I just make sure I have a certain number of calories remaining each day (usually between 250-500 if I can help it) - that way I know I've got my deficit. Doing it this way also gives me some freedom for my super hungry days becaues I know I can eat up to my TDEE figure without being guilt-tripped by MFP's big red numbers!

For those of you who were familiar with the Olivia Method (where'd that go?!), it's sort of like that.