Am I not using the info in MFP correctly?

I assume you have your settings set to sedentary and MFP is NOT automatically assuming any exercise calories? In that case, YES eat back your exercise calories - you need them So you can for sure eat more than 1500 a day. You're actually looking for 1500 calories NET.

How tall are you?

So if you're looking at your home page, it will say FOOD - EXERCISE = xxx NET. The xxx NET is supposed to be 1500.

Now a word of caution, the MFP exercise database can be a bit generous with they calorie burns. You could overwrite what it gives you with about 75% of that number. So say it says you burned 100 calories, you'd overwrite that with 75 instead. And eat that back.

Another option is that if you KNOW you're exercising 6 times a week, you could just change your settings from "Sedentary" to "Very active" and eat that amount. This is called the TDEE method (Total daily energy expenditure). If you do this, you don't enter exercise at all and you'll notice MFP will have you eating 1800 calories (ish) automatically (1500+300=1800 taa-daa!). You might also have to "check" to make sure you're still losing/not losing too fast, just to make sure you have the setting correct. i.e. whether to choose "Active" or "Very active" or... "Extremely active"? (If extremely active is a thing, I have no idea).

ETA: To me, 1500 sounds quite low for a man (of any height over 5' 6") so I think you could definitely eat more and still lose weight. You might be happier for it and be more likely to stick with it if you're feeling better. Now I did also notice that for me, as a smaller woman, I didn't increase my calories but I started feeling much better after week 3.

But look at it this way - if you're eating 1500 but burning 300, you're really only leaving 1200 for the rest of your day - which is the bare minimum for even relatively small women.

Does that help?

ETA again: I just punched in a height of 34 yr old 5' 8" and say 195 lbs into this link below using 5-6 hours a week for (strenuous) exercise.

It says the example man's TDEE is 3298 calories a day and if he's wanting to lose weight around 2 lbs a week (though this site calculates it instead by a reduction in calories of 20%, so 2lb/wk might not actually be the rate of loss) then he should be eating about 2600 calories a day to still lose weight. But he would NOT count exercise calories again. He WOULD continue to exercise the same amount consistently.

For the same height/weight at 3-5 hours a week of moderate exercise, the 5'8" 195 lb male would eat 2370 calories a day and still lose weight. And just imagine how much better this dude would feel eating 2300 calories instead of (1500 - 300) 1200!

See the difference? http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/