Overeating occasionally and other questions

Hi guys, this is my first post so please be nice I'd just like to start off saying how much I appreciate the work that has gone into this website and the iPhone app (and the Android app )! I LOVE the app and I use it every single day - and it's free!! Thanks to everyone for making that possible!

OK, I was going to ask another question but after finally visiting these forums and reading the newbies' READ ME section, which in hindsight I probably should have done a month ago, I kind of have the answer to my original question - I think

What I was *going* to ask was whether the calculated calorie intake per day takes into account your planned exercise routine, but it looks like it doesn't - this is correct?

For instance: I've got a 1370 calorie/day intake goal, aiming to lose 2 pounds/week, exercising 3x/wk for 40 mins. I was wondering whether this means whether or not I have to do this exercise in order to reach my 2 lbs/wk goal? It looks like I *should* still lose 2 pounds/wk even if I didn't do any exercise but ate 1370 calories/day? However, the newbie threads say that I should also eat my exercise calories - which leads onto my next question...

I think I know what the answer to this will be, but I'll ask it anyway There are one or two days/wk where I go out with friends and a large dinner is involved. I have been attending this function for over 3 years so I'd really like to continue if possible. So what tends to happen is I eat roughly 1370 calories on mon + tues, but burn off around 500-600 calories per day for both those days, (and don't eat those extra calories either) so now I'm at a combined deficit of say 1100 calories for those two days. Then on wed I'll go and eat 1100 calories extra (so 1370 + 1100 = 2470 total) - bringing me back up to 3 x 1370 calories for mon-wed. I'm guessing this is no good?

I was hoping that it would be possible to keep a "week-by-week" running calorie count - similar to the situation above - so that by the end of the week I will have consumed a total of 7 x 1370 (9590) calories. However, after reading those newbie threads, it doesn't work like this?

Lastly, on my progress: I've been weighing myself nightly and checking this into MFP. I started at 92.5kg and after about a month I am only on 91.9kg (lowest was 90.9kg a couple of days ago, however the last checkin was on a wed, right after my "big dinner" night, which tends to put on an extra kg!). I have been trying to keep my week-by-week total to around 9590 calories but have been going over a bit, maybe by 1000 calories at most. Over the weeks I have been refining what I eat, learning what's good and bad, etc., so this 1000 calorie excess is slowly being reduced. I am looking at adding a 4th day of swimming so I am now burning an extra 500-600 calories/week. That means I'm doing mon, tues, thurs and sat night swimming for 50 mins or so. So assuming I take my lowest of 90.9kg as my "best progress", that means I've lost about 1.6kg (3.5 pounds), or less than half per week of my projected weight loss. Why is this and how can I improve?

I should also mention that I was already on a diet (no exercise routine) for about 2-3 weeks prior to starting with MFP and I had already lost around 3.5 pounds from that - which was relatively easy to do, and was probably all just fluids, which is why I suspect this next 3.5 pounds has been so much harder to lose.

As I mentioned before, I suspect my week-by-week calorie plan just doesn't work like I think it does, but could someone please confirm this and possibly suggest an alternative?

Oh, and I'm not doing any weight training just yet. I will leave that until a bit later, as I have previously tried to diet AND do weights at the same time and it almost killed me All my exercise so far has consisted of mostly swimming and a bit of walking at lunch time (office job), so I'm guessing there won't be much muscle build up there?

Anyway, sorry for the long post but thanks in advance for all the help!