TDEE Calculating

If you're eating back exercise calories, you're using the NEAT method, not the TDEE one. Choose an activity setting on MFP that includes only your normal daily activity (work, errands, commuting, kids, whatever) and NOT your exercise. That will give you your base calories. Then log and track your 5 day a week workouts separately and eat those calories back.

50 pounds in 6 months might be a bit aggressive as a goal. That's about 2lbs/week. With your stats, you'd be better off targeting around 1lb/week (~500 calorie/day deficit) so that you're eating enough food and not feeling hungry all the time.

That's a very aggressive rate of weight loss.

Read this and you will understand TDEE v. NEAT method better and also how to set more appropriate goals.

community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/819055/setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets/p1

lbmarshall23 wrote: »

Gotcha must of gotten confused. What's a more realistic goal? I'm pretty athletic despite what my weight says if that makes any difference.

A realistic goal would be about a 20% deficit from your daily calories. Which in your case, is about 1lb/week.

Try going to "Home > Goals" and setting up your profile with your stats, and your goal to 1lb/week. You can set your activity level to either sedentary (due to your desk job) or, if you feel you walk a lot or do other sorts of activity in your daily life excluding exercise, you can try "lightly active". Given that you're 23 years old and probably not just a couch potato, lightly active might be more appropriate for you.

You'll be assigned a calorie goal, which should be either 1430 (for sedentary) or 1660 (for lightly active). Those are your base calories.

On top of that, if you work out 5 days a week and burn roughly 200 calories each time, you'd log your exercise and eat back those calories on exercise days.

...Make sense?

Your stats are very similar to mine, aside from age.
I'm 36 y/o
5'2"
182 lbs
deskjob
work out 5 days a week - burn 200 to 300 each time

I wear a fitbit, I have MFP set to sedentary and 1 lb/week weight loss goal.
That gives me a calorie goal of around 1350 per day (which means my TDEE is around 1850).
At first, I was eating back exercise calories but not losing weight.
I think it was a combination of the calorie burn from my HRM not being totally accurate, as well as the fact that food logging isn't 100 percent accurate. I was maintaining.

So I've now stopped eating back any of my exercise calories and I've starting losing again, but very slowly.
My guess is that I'm actually consuming more than 1350 before exercise (Or I'm not burning as much in a day as my fitbit thinks), so with the exercise I'm closer to my 500 calorie deficit, so I'm losing weight.

It also doesn't look like you are really logging any food at all, that's reason enough to believe you're eating over your calories.

lbmarshall23 wrote: »

I write it in my notebook. I've always been someone to write things down. I do however have a hard time calculating home cooked meals.. For example just made egg salad and not sure how to calculate the serving size

Log on the database instead of a notebook. You'll be more accurate.

For home cooked meals you can use the recipe builder tool. Input all the ingredients and their quantities, and it will calculate the totals for you. You can save your most frequently used recipes so it's faster to input them next time.

lbmarshall23 wrote: »

I've already lost 30 pounds doing it this way. I just realized that I might not be logging exercise correctly.

Will that do serving sizes? I make things in bulk.

Yes indeed.

lbmarshall23 wrote: »

I've already lost 30 pounds doing it this way. I just realized that I might not be logging exercise correctly.

Will that do serving sizes? I make things in bulk.

Recipe builder will not calculate serving sizes, it will calculate the number of calories in each serving size you enter. Typically what i do is i use the serving size on the recipe or i decide how much one serving is and divide it out by however many there are (e.g. if i make fruit salad, ill imput all the fruit i use, weigh the total and divide out the number of serving sizes *if the salad is for the whole work week, and i weigh it out and it is 300g and i want 5 servings, then 300/5 will give me the amount of one serving)

It is shocking how energy dense mayo is. Sadly. I love mayo.

lbmarshall23 wrote: »

Alright thanks! If I had a smartphone I'd probably log more, sometimes its just easier to grab the box and add it up on paper. But I'll keep accuracy in mind since I'm having a harder time losing right now.

Write it down and enter it in MFP later, when you don't have MFP handy. Even if you find out something was more calories than you initially thought, at least you find out, and can have the digital record, which can be really useful -- like to open your diary to others for feedback, or to look at your habits over time (in Reports).