New and somewhat confused

You should not go below the minimum calories listed for the day because your body can possibly go into starvation mode, which will actually SLOW your metabolism. I have actually had days where I went over by a couple hundred calories and still dropped weight. I use the daily goal because my exercise varies from day to day and that makes the calories I can eat different from day to day. And ali106 is right, make sure you never go below 1,200 calories!

I respectfully disagree with the website on the 1200 calories a day rule, as does my trainer, my nutritionist, and my doctor.

First of all, if you reduce to 700 less than your BMR, where will you reduce to if you hit a plateau?

Secondly, the BMR is what your body requires to work. Going any lower than this, according to my nutritionist and much research I have done causes you to lose: muscle mass and water weight.

Thirdly, many people, myself included, have experienced greater weight loss by exercising and eating more calories. Calorie restriction slows your metabolism. Eating and moving increase your metabolism.

I believe that the fact that this program will allow you to eat under your BMR is its only flaw. Two pounds a week is extremely aggressive weight loss, and should be reserved for people who have a great percentage of their body weight to lose. Slower weight loss is more likely to be sustainable weight loss.

Are you sure your BMR is 1908 and not your daily allowance with activity? Just something to double check.

I would start with what the website tells you to do to lose a pound a week (JMO) and see what happens. You may lose just fine and feel less deprived, which will make you more able to stick with it.

My theory is that if you cut too much at the beginning, where will you go from there, right? I actually lost more weight eating more calories than I did when I was really depriving myself.

I feel like I'm missing something (like I've entered something wrong) on here sometimes because of what I think the answers should be. My diary says eat 1200 calories, the BMR is only 1257. If I let MFP set the weight loss, I get one pound a week, if I go in and do it myself to reflect a two pound weight loss, the calories come up about the same and my page reflects only a one pound weight loss anyway when I look at the 5 week projection, so the site doesn't really let me set that as a limit, because, in theory, if I need to eat 500 calories less per day for one pound, then I'd eat 1000 less per day for two pounds, but it never says eat 700 calories.

Anyway, I have cut down to only 300 to 600 exercise calories, and have increased my intake to use most of them, along with my 1200 of course, so I always meet the 1257 minimum, and I'm going to be down four pounds this month. So that's all good. I have a very mathematical oriented mind so I tend to overanalyze everything. So I use the numbers as a guide, and do what I am finding works.