Help with daily calorie deficit amount

^^^ This.

Also, with only 9lb to lose, don't try to go faster than 0.5lb per week. Losing slowly and steadily, whilst learning how much food / how many calories you should be eating per day, will help you in the long term. Otherwise, if you just resume eating as you did before, when you reach your goal weight, you'll just put the weight back on.

Also, when eating your exercise calories back, be aware that many calculators, incl MFP, are average figures and may not be absolutely accurate with regards to what you expend. As a result, many people start with only eating back 50-75%. After 4-6 weeks, you'll know if you're losing at the expected rate or not and can adjust accordingly.

So...as others have said you can just use the guided set up - put in your stats and then select .5lbs/week for your rate of weight loss since you're only shooting for a small amount of weight loss. I'd say that MFP actually is slightly *under other methods of calculating calorie needs...but not by a TON.

This also is dependent on your activity level, which I don't know. But I usually just start by using a TDEE calculator and using 'sedentary' since MFP takes intentional exercise into account and adds those calories to your daily calorie goal and most people are logging both their food and workouts on MFP. If you have something other than a typical desk job...or you have a significantly more active lifestyle, then this may be different for you.

But, using 'sedentary' and a TDEE calculator....your maintenance calories are ~1700. BMR ~1450....so see what the guided set up gives you as far as daily calorie goal --- if it gives you somewhere in-between those numbers, just use that. If it gives you something outside of that range....particularly if it gives you less than 1450 --- I'd manually set your daily calorie goal at ... ~1550/1600 and see what happens from there over time.

Your issue is that you don't have much to lose, therefore your deficit will be quite small which makes it more important to be as accurate as possible with what you consume since, mis-estimating something like how much mayonnaise you put on your sandwich (example) could eat up all of your deficit for that day. So if that's a common occurrence it'll be hard to keep in a deficit.

But, I think if you keep active and try to keep your energy expenditure up in general (make sure to go for a little walk each day - even if that's not included in your intentional exercise)....part farther away, take the stairs, etc....you should be good. Slow and steady but over time, that little bit of weight should come off.

Also know that the MFP or TDEE estimate for your particular calorie needs in a day are just estimates and could be off - even significantly enough to eat up your wiggle room as far as deficit goes as well. That's why you kind of just have to start somewhere and then see what happens after a few weeks and adjust from there. Don't be afraid that you're eating too much and gain a couple lbs...just use that data to make any necessary changes.

New to the app and calorie counting. Skinny active kid growing up with high metabolism. Never really put weight on. But becoming an older guy now....so thinking about the classic beer belly guys get. Metabolism slows down etc.

I put in my height and weight and selected active due to job. Plumber similar to carpenter. Selected a little bit of weight loss.

Have a daily calorie goal of 2350 now. Sedentary plus non-gym active amount calorie burn.

Food eaten and exercise calories are subtracted from daily calorie goal. So the app is treating exercise calories burned like food calories eaten. If the goal is to be under my daily calorie goal then it could be a good mental trick.

Add exercise and decrease food intake.

Maybe....will see what calorie counting is like.