You merely need to eat less than you burn in TOTAL daily by a reasonable amount to lose fat weight.
Do it by an unreasonable amount, you'll lose muscle mass too - that's not good short or long term success. Perhaps you have already experienced this if only doing cardio.
When you have less to lose, it's even easier to cause the stress and make that latter part happen.
So unwise choice trying for 2 lbs weekly, which obviously doesn't work for you now.
Better choice setting MFP to it sounds like 500 cal deficit.
Wiser choice though with only 8 lb to go would be a 250 cal deficit.
And reach your eating goal!
Are you willing to miss goal weight by 20% and say that's close enough? That's what you are doing with eating goal it sounds like.
Why not use the tool correctly?
Most tools used wrong at best just don't work to do what they could do. At worst they'll hurt you.
Guess which side of tool use you are likely on at this point. Sounds like you may not have used MFP correctly either, or you would have been eating more.
You've likely already stressed your body out, and Fitbit is estimating calories for a decently healthy body for which the stats are right - yours likely no longer is, so it's over-estimating calorie burn.
So 2 directions to go here. Keep eating less and less, and eventually you will start losing again, as the body can only slow down about 20% off healthy level. Fitbit estimate of daily burn will be useless at this point.
Adherance to such a low calorie diet may be terrible and you won't sustain it well, in which case you really won't lose that well. It'll be a stress on the body and exercise will not progress well, sickness can be more frequent, ect.
This is also usually the failure point for maintaining goal weight if you even reach it. Needing to eat about 20% less than would have been possible.
Other direction, let your body get healthy, let it burn what it could (though you've probably lost muscle mass and it's less than it could have burned), and then take a reasonable deficit. 250 cal, or 1/2 lb weekly.
During this time, exercise will probably transform your body more, unless only doing cardio, which doesn't do much transforming usually, especially not after a certain point.
Do the 2nd option by eating about 200 more daily for a week at a time, until you are finally eating what you burn.
Yes, take a diet break. What's a few weeks of purposely eating at potential maintenance compared to the months of nothing eating at suppressed maintenance, and future months of nothing if you keep doing the same thing that is causing no difference.
What's that definition of insanity ....... ?
Just speaking frankly and honestly about the potential you caused here, and how to get out of it.
Now, the only other thing this could be is if your food logging is so terrible and almost dishonest that you are wiping out an almost 1000 cal deficit daily.
But I'm assuming that's not the case.
Because whatever level you are eating at right now on average - is your maintenance. Suppressed maintenance. But like many others, you can get it back up to what Fitbit is suggesting, closer to potential maintenance.
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