The "Olivia Method" - the cool new way to set up your MFP go

This is very confusing!!

I am 5'3", 38 years old, female and am currently 165lbs. My goal is 140lbs so only 25lbs to lose. MFP says my daily goal is 1500 to lose 0.5lb per week. I have been doing this for 30 days and so far have only lost 1lb so I need some more help. I exercise about 4 or 5 times per week burning 400-500 cals per workout. Sometimes I eat them and sometimes I dont. This last week my average net has been 1360 (highest being 1634 and lowest being 1063).

Step 1 - My BMR says 1398
Step 2 - 1.3. x 1398 = 1817 - is this maintenance?? MFP says my maintenance is 1750
Step 3 - 1398 + 1000 -1817 = 581 - what is this figure representing? Is this the amount I should burn off each day in exercise calories?

Ok, so 1.3 is a calculation to represent a bit of light activity in your daily life (not including exercise). I think MFP uses a slightly lower number for sedentary setting (1.25) and slightly higher for lightly active (1.375). I use 1.3 because that's what my nutritionist used for me - it seemed to be the standard calculation for her to use, so that's what I've been going off of. In the end, you know how active you are, so you'd be the best judge. If you think you're very sedentary, go with the 1750 figure, if you think that's a little low, go with lightly active. I like 1.3 because it's in the middle : )

so if you stick with 1.3 - you'd set calories to 1817, try to stick to around 1400 calories per day - not under. And if you want to create a 1000 calorie deficit, you'd need to burn 581 calories and not eat above 1400. Then if you burn anything above 581, you would eat the extra calories back to keep that 1000 calorie deficit. Make sense? And again, the easiest way is to just look at that green number (calories remaining). It shows you your deficit right there, so if the number is over 1000, eat until it gets to 1000 or under.

So what if we just ate 1500 calories a day and exercised? But if we burn over 600 calories eat the extra.. is it the same thing? I am afraid if i change my settings i will see oh i have 1770 each day to eat and i will eat them :-(

I'll use myself as an example for the calculations:

Step 1: BMR = 1480
Step 2: BMR x 1.3 (1480 x1.3) = 1924
Step 3: (BMR + 1000) - maintenance/ 1480 + 1000 - 1924 = 556.

So I set my MFP calorie goal to 1924.
I aim to eat at least 1500 - 1600 calories per day, regardless of exercise, but definitely no less than 1480.
If I burn more than 556 through exercise on a given day, I should eat at least the surplus calories. So if I burn 800 calories through exercise, I would want to eat at least 244 calories above my goal of 1500 - so at least 1744.

Good luck and happy deficit creating!

Ok..I love this and I want to try it...I'm HORRIBLE at math..so if you could create a little guidance for my situation. I'm a fitness instructor and this week I'll probably be burning over 1000 calories a day at the gym (crazy week). My maintenance according to this is 1911 calories. So If I burn 1100 calories today...how much could I eat and still create a 500 calorie deficit? Did I mention I SUCK at math? Thanks for your help!!

What is your BMR? I can't do the full calculations without that.