Sticking to your calorie intake

It's definitely working for me. I've lost 22 pounds since I started tracking in December, and by choosing what I eat carefully, I never feel deprived.

Yep!

yep!

Yes it will work. Guaranteed. Do this, get results. Just don't cheat and then blame the app.

The real trick is sticking with the program. it can work, if you do it smart, but the goal they set you is just a tool based on average statistics. it won't necessarily be the results that you're individually looking for, BUT the more accurate you get with your counting and taking into consideration the amount that you burn the more accurate their system becomes. and if you have any doubts Always do your own research. there are dozens of pages that give statistics for different body types when it comes to consumption and burn.

Yep it works.

Depends. There are a few different formulas for calculating BMR and TDEE. Your best bet is to try to get an Lean Body Mass estimate and use formulas that use that to calculate your TDEE rather than using a height/weight BMI ratio, which is what MFP uses. I found MFP to be a little in the higher range of calorie targets. That said, my recommendation is you set your activity level to the lowest option that represents your daily activity (I said sedentary even though I walk a lot) and be very conservative in your weight loss goals (.5 pounds or .25 kilos per week).

Depending on where you are starting at, if you're really overweight, it's easy to create a deficit. Like if your TDEE is 2300 calories per day to maintain 230 lbs with 50% body fat, and you need a deficit of 500 calories per day to lose 1 lb per week, that puts you at 1800 calories per day. As you get closer to your goal weight, you're going to need to tweak those numbers a bit. MFP will adjust with you which is nice, but a deficit of 500 calories may no longer be realistic. That's one place where MFP isn't so helpful.

Secondly, don't eat back your exercise calories. MFP automatically adds any calories burned to your daily target. If there's a way to turn that off, you probably want to. I'd argue that MFP is already pretty generous in its estimated TDEE that it's worth just calculating your own TDEE for different levels of activity to get an idea, and then just experimenting to see how you respond. For instance, if sedentary you know you need to stay under 1500 to maintain your deficit, then look at a TDEE chart to determine what to multiply your BMR by for an adjusted TDEE based on your activity and make that your new target, not the literal calories burned suggested by MFP. So if you swam laps for an hour, then use a factor of 1.3 x your BMR instead of the 1.2 used for sedentary.

Overall though, it's been working for me but only by sticking with my own TDEE calculated targets. The MFP target is more like, if I go over for some reason I don't feel too bad because then I'm still in a deficit.