If eating at estimated TDEE (and over) for one activity level and you were less active actually, that would imply the estimate was low.

But it depends on how much exercise was lost, how much did activity level stay the same, or did it increase with extra time and family, and how accurate was logging.

I think that's why getting through these weeks with no gains or minimal and stats that are likely pretty rough is a good goal in itself. And no basing anything on inaccurate numbers.

Not really enough time or accuracy.

That's like some I've seen will spend their reset time with one activity level or type of exercise - fully intending to change it up when they go to deficit. So all the time spent trying to nail a TDEE is really wasted as the activity level changes.
So having undesired results is not unexpected.

You know, at times I wonder if the whole finding the tdee is truly necessary. If you have been at a deficit for a long time, I see the merit in increasing calories to help with balancing hormonal levels, although I would need to do more research on that. However, if you increase your calories to the low end of the tdee calculators, and feel fuller and more satisfied, I would think the hunt for finding the true tdee might be unnecessary, as giving your body significantly more calories then it was previously used to would fulfill the goal of helping balancing hormones and metabolism. Now if you wanted to know your tdee at the time, then great, but it is a number that is in constant flux if your goal is to continue to lose weight.

Any thoughts?

Here's what I did: I spent 8 months or so at around a 500 deficit, starting at 2500 and eventually adjusting down with weight loss to around 2200 ( height 5'10, weight 250 in the beginning, now 200). I then began to stall and felt crappy and hungry constantly. I then found this place and looked at around 4 different calorie calculators, with coming to around the consensus of a 2900 tdee, with around 2600 being the low end of tdee calculations. I then began to eat at around 2650, with some 2700-2800 days. I felt full, felt better, but had no real gain in weight. Now I have been doing that same level for around a month and a half and lost an additional 5 pounds while feeling better on a daily basis. Not saying this is typical, obviously I'm below my true tdee since I had weight loss, but it seems I restored my previous imbalance when I was working out more, eating less, and not losing weight as easily.

@crewbprice - I think the issue comes in for many trying a reasonable deficit.

They were nowhere near reasonable for some good amount of time, and so the idea of raising calories near but under TDEE isn't actually a total unstressing of the body.

And while studies have shown that a body can slowly recover from extreme deficit, at least one took a over a year.
Another took 3 months to merely gain back 50% of what was suppressed, and that was eating at lab measured TDEE.

So the idea is to not take forever in getting a fully healthy body back - many have plateaued already for months - and so a good chunk of weeks in the span of time isn't that bad.
But needing to go another year? Ouch.

Because what if the hitting low end of TDEE still didn't cause any weight loss - it should though if truly below TDEE.
But as many have proved - when raising calories up, each step up results in no weight loss at the higher number. So body was not actually burning full-steam enough to create a deficit to potential TDEE.

Here's one study that references the others.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/heybales/view/reduced-metabolism-tdee-beyond-expected-from-weight-loss-616251