Exercise Calories why I don't use them.

You do you. As long as your weight changes stay in a sensible range, and the trend is as you intend, you're gold.

You mention exercise calories being estimated as a consideration. True. But every single bleepin' number we use in this process is an estimate, including our food logs no matter how meticulously we log. Fortunately, we don't need perfect estimates of any of the variables, just workably close estimates.

The best estimate of total personal calorie needs (TDEE) total comes from many-multi-week experience, not from any calculator or fitness tracker. (Women of the relevant age/stage should look at it in context of monthly cycles.)

I wouldn't do it the way you do, personally. I mean: I didn't, and don't. I lost about 50 pounds back in 2015-16, with the loss rate quite predictable once I estimated my actual maintenance calorie needs from my own experiential data.

Because my exercise is seasonal and weather-dependent, I've used MFP's "add exercise calories separately" method from the very beginning. I make an effort to estimate exercise calories carefully, using various methods, and pick the method I think is most reasonable for each exercise type.

Doing that, my weight loss was predictable, and 9+ years of maintenance have been predictable, too. That included a phase of ultra-slowly and quite painlessly re-losing around 10ish pounds that crept on in the first 4 years of maintenance (predictably from my behavior, BTW), with a tiny deficit of 100-150 calories on average for around a year. I've also had multiple times in there when I couldn't exercise at all for up to several weeks because of illness, injury, surgical recovery, etc. Body weight stayed predictable.

Since my weight changes have stayed in a sensible range (after that initial effort to find personalized calorie needs), the trend is predictable, and I readily reach my goals if I stick with the right process, I figure I'm also gold.

Different methods are gold for different people.

Honestly, either the TDEE method - eating the same number of calories every day, having included a reasonable allowance for average exercise - or the MFP "add exercise separately" method can work fine. One or the other will suit different people: Also fine.

What I think is a bad plan is adopting a base calorie goal for aggressively fast loss, then stacking an intense exercise program on top of that, with no allowance for exercise calories at all in any way.

Why? Because really fast loss increases health risks, potentially severely so at the extreme. The definition of "too fast" depends on current body weight, health history, other sources of stress in one's life, and more.

Also a bad plan: One that doesn't achieve one's sensible goals. (I do think "risk your health" is worse, for quite a few people, compared to "don't reach goals".)

Sounds like you're doing fine. No need for others to follow your methods, though. They can do whatever's most sensible and helpful for them, IMO.

@rms62003 I don't use a Garmin but I have my Apple Watch connected to MFP. What MFP is doing is comparing its estimate of your calorie burn for the day (based on your stats, stated activity level, and any logged exercise) to your Garmin's estimate of your total burn. So a -54 indicates your Garmin TDEE for the day is a little lower than your MFP estimate. The day when you saw a positive adjustment meant your Garmin estimate was a little higher. Really, that's pretty close, the margin of error for logging food is likely higher than 54 calories for the day.

I tend to see small positive adjustments on days when I don't log exercise, so it doesn't surprise me that you saw a 62-calorie adjustment on your sedentary day. It just means you moved around a little more than your activity multiplier. If you chose sedentary on MFP, it just multiplies your BMR by a number that is associated with a sedentary lifestyle. In reality you might move more or less than that. I think if your adjustments are within 100 calories, you probably picked the right activity level. The main problem I've noticed is MFP doesn't always sync with my watch. Sometimes it will go days with no sync, then start syncing again. I don't know why it does that, I ended up just choosing an activity level close to my Apple Watch TDEE. If I start seeing larger adjustments (on days when one appears), I will reconsider my activity level setting, especially if my weight loss stalls. (Touching wood since it hasn't happened yet).

Just curious. How are you tracking biking calories burned? So many variables. Type of bike, terrain, wind, etc.

Any consistent logging strategy of both calories in and out can be compared to actual results and an error delta / percentage error can be estimated against the consistent logging strategy.

And it really will be just an approximate error estimate because deficits and loss tend to be dynamic to a degree. So even with consistent logging the error rate will still be fluctuation a bit.

But just like with hand grenades… close enough is good enough.

If I was eating to my exercise calories, I would be eating additional 2000 calories a week. I would still be losing weight but not at the rate I want to.

and I haven't had those cranky days yet. But they will come.

This is your third go around, right?

What are you doing different this time as compared to the previous times?

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I recall back 10 years ago that I too was getting cranky while losing at the higher end of what turned out to be an average of 1 and 1/2 lb a week during my first year of logging on MFP.

But then I figured out that since I wanted to still be around in 10 years… it wasn't a race. There is no end date!

Because I was not planning on making any changes—other than the ones that would be, inevitably, applied by external circumstances—ever!
Or at the very least till a good 5+ years after finishing weight loss. (Of course I've made changes. We make adjustments all the time. But intent and mindset matter and contribute to how we react.)

With no end in sight, spending my time losing weight while hanging on for dear life and being cranky made no sense!

But seeking sustainable loss rates? Seeking habits that I could continue into maintenance? Trying to strategize how I could maximize the time I would spend at reduced weight even if things went sideways in the end and I ended up regaining everything? That the sort of stuff made sense to me!

So now I am 10 years closer to the (inevitable) end date. But not because I've stopped managing my weight!

To the contrary, the end date has probably been pushed back a tiny bit because I am still within the 22.8 to 26 bmi range (23.8 this morning)… a bit more than 10 years after I first joined MFP. In December of 2013, before I started trying to "move a little bit more", I was well into Class III obesity (bmi 44+)

And, yes, for me, BMI numbers are entirely consistent with the corresponding adiposity levels! ;-)