Keep flipping back in forth in calorie methods

That sedentary including how much weight you want to lose in a week is what's giving you 1250 cals ... how about finding out what you would need to eat to keep your weight right where it is and deciding how many calories a day you want to cut out of your eating plan and set it up that way via custom settings?

Also -- if you have a desk job and do not have kids that you are chasing around with after work, then you are probably sedentary as you spend a lot more after work time sitting or laying around than you do lifting, pushing, pulling, walking, running, picking up and putting down ...

.... here are the descriptions from MFP of the different levels of activity for you baseline set-up
How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)

Tip --- those exercise calories you burn are not strictly all from exercise, some of them, if not most, are coming from your body keeping you alive ... which is why you don't want to eat back all of them because then you would be over eating.

Was going to advise manually adjusting but having re-read post I see you already do.

I struggle with this as well.

You realise, I hope, that you're not in a sprint to some sort of imaginary finish.

Keeping to a reasonable deficit that has you losing (even at a slower pace than you have been) is much much more important than pushing your limits and running into the danger of giving up because things are becoming too hard and you're too hungry (or too hangry).

A very quick back of the napkin calculation says that you've lost 8lbs a month during the past 8 months. This is quite fast and is pointing that you're very close to achieving a daily deficit of almost 1000 Cal a day (i.e. the deficit that a 2lb a week setting is supposed to set you up for.)

Reconsider that setting and whether it would make sense to change it first to 1.5lbs a week, then to 1, and then to 0.5lbs as you move down from morbidly obese to obese, to overweight, to normal weight... Or even straight to 1lbs a week if you are having compliance issues.

I was ready to quit when moving at a rate of 2+lbs a week and trying desperately to eat as little as I could. Then I discovered MFP and the freedom of eating the most I could while achieving my goals.

I don't think that I ever went faster than 1.5lbs a week on MFP, most of the time much slower. it hasn't stopped me from getting where I want to be... to the contrary.

So you've lost 64lbs in about 6-7 months. 10lbs per months. That tells us your average deficit is more than 1000 calories per day lower than you have needed to maintain. If your losses are still at this rate you can and probably should, up your intake a bit. 250 calories a day would steady you out to more like 8lbs per month.

legowrangler wrote: »

I have 4 kids including a 7 month old baby to chase around lol

I am 5 foot 3, 29 years old, and started 209 pounds. Lightly active set to lose 1 pound per week. My calories are set to 2130.

I think you need to go ahead and keep your settings on lightly active. Try changing your goal to less of a loss to see if you need to eat more. You need to fuel your body to get it going.

I'm 5'1" and currently 166lbs. Desk job. 3 kids and work out. I have my calories set to 1400 and eat back half my exercise calories. I lose approx 1.5-2lbs per week. I don't think increasing your calories will stop weight loss. It may slow it, but make it more sustainable

legowrangler wrote: »

So I flip back in forth between setting myself as sedentary and eating back some exercise calories, Setting myself as lightly active and then making just a custom goal of 1400 calories. But lately I just feel hungry all the time so I don't know which goal setting I should use. I am 5 foot 3 242 lbs and 28 yrs old. I have a desk job but I do go to the gym and do 30-45 minutes on elliptical typically three-4 days a week and I do planks and squats. So far his July I've lost 64 lbs but honestly don't know how much I should be eating now because eating sedentary only gives me 1250 cals.

Congrats on the weight loss , You have did a Great job . I just use MFP and when i kept going over i adjusted my rate of loss down from 2 pounds per week to 1.5 pounds a week , it gave me a few more calories to eat . soon i go to one pound a week ,,

Good luck