Overwhelmed with information!

Your TDEE is Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or how much you burn just existing if you're sedentary per day. So the number it gave you, 2230, is how much you eat to maintain your current weight. In order to lose, you need to eat 15-20% less than that: So 1895 or 1784 calories to start losing, respectively.

Honestly, I think that saying you're 'lightly active' is too nebulous and instead, you should figure out how many calories you have burned per workout and eat part (part, not all, because most everything overestimates calories burned) of those calories back on top of your reduced calorie intake I mentioned above.

MFP, on the other hand, builds in the calorie deficit for you.

I make it as simple as possible for myself.

First, I don't watch WHAT I eat necessarily. I eat fast food of some kind every single day.

Also, I don't exercise. Not a fan. I'm too lazy.

All I do is LOG EVERYTHING I EAT, DRINK, OR BREATHE as accurately as possible. If it has any calories, it goes in the Food Diary. And I make sure I stay under 80% of my TDEE.

You can calculate your TDEE at http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html. It gives you your total daily energy expenditure, based on your age, gender, height, weight and activity level. Eat 80% of that calorie total. Profit.

You can also calculate the TDEE of yourself at your desired weight. That will be your maintenance calorie total. You should always be UNDER that calorie total if you want to lose weight. If you want, you can give yourself a range of calories, with your current TDEE - 20% as your lower limit and your goal weight TDEE - 10% as your upper limit.

And if you want to improve your fitness level along the way, you can exercise if you want. I would start with something low-impact, like walking. Walking is great, you can walk slow, walk fast, walk short distances, or walk long distances. Walking doesn't burn tons and tons of calories, but really, if you're eating right, you'll burn those calories as a matter of course, just by going about your normal activities. Make the math work for you, and don't make it harder on yourself than it has to be. Think about the lifestyle you will realistically have when you're at your goal weight. If that lifestyle doesn't include a lifelong commitment to strenuous exercise, then you probably shouldn't make strenuous exercise part of your weight loss strategy. :bigsmile:

When I started, I was similarly overwhelmed and attempted to get the numbers exact. Well as much as possible. Simply became an exercise in frustration for me. Throw in differing philosophies on nutrient balancing, etc, not to mention what I should be eating and not eating....well you know the story. For what it's worth here's what I finally came up with. I have a desk job but am fairly active outside of it. I elected to let MFP determine my BMR for a sedentary lifestyle. Initially I wanted to lose 2 pounds a week but fairly quickly decided that slower is better and settled on 1 pound per week. MFP then calculated the calorie deficit I would need and I used that as my baseline. If I sat on my butt all day and ate the goal calories set by MFP, I could reasonably expect a 1 pound weight loss per week. Didn't get my panties in a bunch if I went over or under much. If I exercised (and I did) I ate back at least one half of those calories, sometimes all of them. The big thing was accurately capturing what I ate (that meant measuring stuff) and proper meal planning. I also didn't sweat the small stuff. For example if I went to the mall for a couple of hours, I didn't try to capture that as "exercise". Sorry, but to me exercise means a concerted focus on such things. Cleaning house isn't one of them. If someone handed me a couple of M&Ms, so be that too. No need for me to be that anal about capturing it. (I said a couple of M&M's not a couple of handfuls). One last thing, I did tweak the macros some to put more protein and potassium in my diet and reduce the sodium and cholesterol intake (doctor's orders). Seems to have worked. Ok that wasn't the last thing, this is. Don't get worked up over daily weight gains. I've gained as much as 3-5 pounds of water in a day, especially after strength training...and I'm a man! Hope this helps and good luck!!