You are in Eat more to lose and have to eat a lot more than 1200...this group is all about not limiting yourself to 1200. You do not have to do that to lose weight and it will actually be to your detriment if you do. It is too low and you body will hold onto everything because it is not enough. So do not be concerned with keeping your calorie intake at 1200. Read BMR and TDEE and what you need to do with them in this forum.

Hi Janice, you can check out this calculator, http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

I entered in some of your stats as sedentary and your tdee is about 1600. If you aren't sedentary and work out, lets say 1-3 hours per week your tdee is about 1800. EM2WL recommends a 15% cut from your tdee so if you're sedentary it would be 1300 and if lightly active it is about 1500. Now when you calculate your activity into your tdee you are not suppose to eat back exercise cals. Hope this helps

Thank You!

I just calculated using this tool and it truly helped!
My BMR is 1336 and TDEE 2071 (and with the -15% = 1760)
I work in the health field so I'm almost always on my toes + I exercise about 25-45/5days

So they are saying I should have about 1761 - do I customize my MFP to that number?

It doesn't stand out, but that TDEE 5 level chart is all about exercise stacked on to sedentary lifestyle otherwise.

If you are on your toes all the time, that puts you at Lightly Active just for the work.
If exercise made select Moderately Active (1.55 so you did).
Then the 2 combined would actually be higher still.

If you want to honestly follow the program for eating correctly for your level of activity, and taking a reasonable deficit to retain muscle mass and only burn fat mass, then you burn more than 2000 almost guaranteed.

You should go up to Very Active (1.725) or at least in-between those levels (1.64 x BMR) to be closer to reality.

So BMR 1336 x 1.64 = 2191 better estimated TDEE

2191 x 0.85 = 1862

And yes, 100 more can make a difference.

The easiest thing to do (regarding your MFP settings) --- once you have figured out your TDEE, just change your MFP goals to reflect that number that you want to hit every day. If you exercise, you can go ahead and log it in MFP (just so that you have a record of it), but then just change the calories burned to "1", so that MFP does not mess up your calorie goals (or macros). Since your exercise and daily activities are already factored into that TDEE number, you don't want them added on to your daily goal :-)

Glad I read this. Thank Anitra!! I always wondered why some people's workouts say 1 calorie. Now I know, I will be doing that too!

Yep! It's not a big deal when MFP messes with your daily calorie goal, because that one is easy to do the math, but I hate when it messes with my macros! Too much math required then! :-D Changing calories burned to "1" eliminates all of that...