I liked it - it is realistic, except perhaps for putting a time-based goal in there - which is usually fraught with unneeded stress when it's not met, and still gives people the ability to make something unreasonable and probably unsustainable.

I don't like that it still doesn't distinguish exercise time - what is several hrs weekly? And is several hours of walking, running, or lifting - because obviously the differences could be major there, even averaged out daily.

Comes up with the same average daily MET activity factor as other tables and my spreadsheets.

The study that lead to the 7000 as better estimate - well, if you take people using memory based meal logging and little to no measurement methods used for actual sizes, and poor estimates of exercise intensity - then I'm sure the 7000 more than makes up for the bad inaccuracies found in those logging methods.

But take even a bad but honest logger on MFP - and I don't think that much inflation is needed to balance out the inaccuracies.

I think plenty of shown with their own accurate logging and exercise that is decently estimated and daily activity tracker - that the 3500 was a whole lot more accurate than 7000 was.

I think in context the 7000 could be applied prior to the days of easy MFP or other logging site use.
I think now though, just going to cause some crazy goals.

That site uses the 3500 method.

The 7000 is a different article making the rounds. Let's see how many people attempt to sustain a 2000 calorie deficit now because they want 2 lbs weekly.

Ya, that's shouldn't end badly.

Mine are waaaay out of whack if you go with the activity level they state. At least 500 cals over for what I have determined to be my maintenance level (through years of figuring it out!)

The "supertracker" numbers generated seem to be pretty close to what actually happens with my body as far as intake. But the activity part seems to be a big guess with a lot of leeway.

Oh, and the big point I get from the article is that there is no way to pinpoint exactly how big your deficit is, because of many factors, including adaptation. I would agree with that big point. But I think to take it very literally and to start trying to create a 7,000 cal deficit is going against the whole spirit of what is being said by the article.

But that is just what I take from it.

That second article seems really flawed.
It states that in 1 year "most" overweight people will lose half of the expected amount, but makes no mention of variables like compliance, consistency, etc. Do people lose less because they are sloppy with tracking intake? Do they gain weight back and therefore at the end of the year weigh more than they did at month 9?

What’s realistic? According to Hall, in the first year of a new weight-loss program, most overweight people will lose about half the weight that the 3,500-calories rule predicts. In other words, over 12 months, the new rule is 7,000 calories = one pound. (The math changes slightly over shorter and longer periods of time, with few managing to lose weight beyond 12 months.)

This is poor logic. Just because 3500 yields half the expected results for most people, does not necessarily mean that 7000 will result in one pound of loss. The article itself states that weight loss is not linear, so why are they using linear extrapolation for non-linear data?

It would be interesting to see the source data, but I don't see a way to read that anywhere.
As for the BWP, it is fairly close for me, but my calculations put me somewhere between active and very active. The year estimate is a ridiculous range for me. I am not very big, and it gives me a range that is 20% of my body weight!