I've always tried to be pretty accurate with my MFP logging, and logging specific ingredients, albeit with some estimations around weight etc rather than weighing everything out. So if i have a bowl of chilli and rice, i'll just stick find something that fits around 600 calories which in my head seems sensible. However i'm starting to wonder if i'm largely underestimating things.
I have my daily calorie goal set to 1500 per day (based on being 100kg and 6'3 and wanting to lose maximum weight, whilst being inactive), and then any exercise calories i burn i aim to eat on top. Whilst i know that that this can be inflated i figure that i'd still be at a defecit due to the daily goal being so low.
I would say i'm usually either 100-200 either side of my Net calorie goal, some days i'll be well over if someone has come round with cake and other days i'll be well under if i've done a few workouts, but generally i'm fairly close. My logic being that even if i was over my goal by 200 calories a day, that in theory should still only be 1700calories for the day and therefore low enough to bring on weight loss.
I found this Chart on the MFP website showing Net Calories over the last 90 days. Annoyingly it's not in the App, that would be a great feature.
Whilst it shows that i'm actually often above that 1500 mark, i'm still mainly below 2000kcal which i would expect to result in some weight loss, albeit gradually. However looking at my weight over the same period, it has largely stagnated, with a ramp up this last week which corresponds to eating more this last week, and not helped by having a beer advent calendar which adds ~200kcal per day of "nothing" calories.
This therefore suggests i must be underestimating the quantities i'm eating and where i need to get much better. Especially since this is generally the period where things will loosen a lot more with more junk food being around. All i can hope is that i keep my running up to offset this.
It has been a fairly depressing few months as i was really hoping to drop weight after my injury to help recovery and that really hasn't happened which is annoying me now i reflect back on it.