Help on daily calorie defect

The calorie deficit is what you are losing so at 960 per day you should lose technically around 1.9lbs per week. the "normal" activity of calories burned is 2160 so you are burning almost 100 calories per hour doing your "normal" daily activities based on your weight and whatever you told MFP your fitness level is.

If you do additional exercise like elliptical and burn 500 calories, technically you should eat those 500 calories back in GOOD food so that you don't lose more than 2lbs in a week. More than 2 in a week is supposedly bad for you. However, I will caution you to watch yourself when eating back those calories because those machines aren't always right, they are only estimates. You may have to play with those a little. My physical trainer told me to eat the calories back if I felt that I needed them. She said if I felt good and not overly hungry or weak that I can just not eat them back. I also reduce my workout by 100 calories per hour since I would have burned those anyway and they WERE factored in as part of my daily burn already.