confused please help me out

you use either or. They are different formulas.

If you want to maintain your weight you'd have to eat what you spend or close to it (in theory). There is more to you than calories. There is also more to calories than that which you eat and burn. Just like you have have H2 on the left and O on the right when you bring them together you have water, same goes for the body. Chemical balances (or imbalances) change your weight as well. These are all just guides to help.

They're both pretty close, if you do it right.

TDEE calculators and MFP... they're all estimates.


Take the number that a TDEE calculator gives you, then do this:
Block off 6 weeks. log EXACTLY what you eat for those six weeks, weigh at the beginning, weight at the end. If you've lost, you're eating under your TDEE. If you haven't lost, congrats.. you found your TDEE, if you've gained... then you're above TDEE.

From there, look at how much you lost or gained and you have a rough estimate of how to shift your intake to balance it out.

Online calculators are great, but they're just estimates. They give you decent ideas for starting points. From there, it's on you to fine tune it.

to loose the last couple of pounds if I do im not to bothered really MFP is set at lightly active and 1lb a week. This comes back at 1350.
TDEE says 1885 to maintain so to loose i thought id need to take off 500 which gives me 1385 which is why im confused as both figures are the same. So if I use MFP and then eat back my say 200 calories worth of exercise I have then eaten more than the TDEE which cant be right.

Also am i right to take of 500 from the TDEE i know that you need to have a deficit of 3500 a week to loose 1lb which is why i took 500 a day of from the TDEE but i see people saying only take 20% which takes it to 1508.

Gosh im making this confusing sorry

the 20% is a starting deficit that a lot of folks use, if you have a lot more to lose than what you have. Use tdee - 5% since it's just the last few pounds.

Let me see if I understand what you are saying. You are trying to figure out your TDEE, you plugged your numbers into a calculator and it came back 1885, is that right? You put your stats in MFP as Lightly Active, and maintain my current weight, and it said 1850?

Then I think those numbers are correct. The 1850is MFP's estimate of your TDEE, which is very close to the 1885 you calculated elsewhere.

What you are asking is if you should eat back calories? If you are doing the TDEE method, and you really are maintaining at ~1850, then no - don't eat any more than that. If you exercise, eat 1850, and lose, then yes, eat a little more if your goal is to maintain. If you are gaining at 1850, eat a little less.... but give anything you do several weeks of consistency before making a change. In maintenance I believe you will see some weight fluctuations and many recommend to have a maintenance "range" of 3-5 lbs you are happy with.

Yes that is eactly right. Which is why I was getting confused seen as MFP and the TDEE calculator come out pretty much the same. I couldnt understand why I was being told to eat back calories from the MFP and not on the TDEE with them both being the same to start of with as that would make one really wrong

Keep in mind that both the calculators, and the activity estimates on MFP are just that, estimates. When you said Lightly Active, was that because of your job, your non-exercise activity, or did it include your true "exercise"? Same with how you filled out the TDEE calculator?

I use a FitBit, and that too is still just an estimate, although I feel it is more accurate than a bunch of numbes I guess at to plug into the spreadsheet. At the end of the day (really the end of the week) it comes down to - keeping things consistent, seeing if you gain or lose while factoring in normal fluctuations, and then making adjustments from there, but don't adjust too hastily.

I hit my goal about 6 weeks ago, went a pound below goal, and didn't really change my calorie goal in MFP yet, but I've been a lot more relaxed about going over it on a daily/weekly basis. I've fluctuated about 3-4 lbs up, then back down, then back up within the last 6 weeks. I'm still trying to figure out what my numbers should be for maintenance, but also trying not to sweat it too much since I think monitoring it closely will enable me to correct anything before it gets too out of hand.

IM never to sure which activity to select so play it safe. I work as a nanny so look after children although we do a lot of stationary activities such as arts and crafts, construction etc so class my job as lightly active as teacher falls into this category. I then generally get chance to do exercise three or four times a week. Swimming for 60min either once or twice, insanity work out dvd once or twice depending whether I have been able to go swimming twice or not , and then 20 minutes run once a week. Would this be lightly active?

I'm certainly no expert - but I think what you have described for nanny work is lightly active for your JOB, and then exercise on top of that I would track and eat back at least some of the calories.

Again, this is just my situation - but I have a desk job and so at first with MFP I had myself set as Sedentary. I have two small children though, and had no idea how "active" I was because of that, until I got my FitBit. When I got my FitBit and started seeing that I average >10K steps/day without even really "exercising", just getting kids up and fed and off to school and then me to work and then household activities in the evening - I changed my setting to "lightly active". Now FitBit thinks my maintenance level is about 1900 calories, and the FitBit says I average about 2100 calories/day burned, which is my actual TDEE. So the difference between those two numbers, is about what I would burn from any exercise or just elevated activity for the day. Therefore I do eat those calories back, when MFP gives me a calorie adjustment from the FitBit activity synch.

Hope that helps.