Should I Increase My Calorie Goal?

Hello,

I’m concerned that I’m possibly losing too much weight too fast. I’ve got a history of rubber banding when it comes to weight-loss and I’ve been trying my best to make changes to my lifestyle as minimal as possible in hopes that it would make it easier to maintain long term.

I’m three weeks in, and I’m averaging 2.8 lbs per week. I’m eating most nights as close as I can to keep on pace with 1lbs per week. There have even been days where I ate over my caloric goal. There have also been days where I was significantly under. I just don’t want to have a repeat of all my other weight loss attempts.

Additional Information

The days that I ate significantly under were often days I planned to treat myself to fast food, or eat a meal I thought would be significantly more calories than it actually was. Knowing what I know now I don’t plan on saving as many calories leading up to those meals.

All of my food is measured with a scale (for the most part) but once I have a good idea of what the caloric intake is by the look of the portion size (I.e. a bowl of bits and bites is around 440 calories) I simply input a rough estimate.

I’m not exercising still, I’m simply watching my calories in calories out. It’s the method I used in the past to lose 50lbs in two months. The problem was I would exercise 6+ hours a day to really inflate the deficit. Other issue is that is not manageable lifestyle nor was it a safe method to lose weight (despite being monitored by professionals).

Main Question

At what point can I use my weight loss to more accurately assess my caloric needs for maintenance/weight loss? I assume that MFP guidelines are great to start but probably need some tweaking depending on the individual.