What should I set the daily calorie estimate at, personalized or sedentary?

[woody-c]

OK, so I'm a little confused here!  I'm pretty active - doing Turbo Fire 6 days a week, I work full time, and try to get as much extra walking in as possible.  Should I set the calorie estimator in the food log to "personalized" or "sedentary" for the most acurate reading?  I'm trying to lose 15 lbs. with a 500 calorie deficit.  Any help is much appreciated.

[megg0616]

I would personalize it. Since you are pretty active the personalization will give you a better picture of what you need calorie wise.

[slysam]

They will end up the same either way, but I prefer "personalized" because it is easier for me to plan around where it starts. With either method, your allowance will update as your activity from the tracker is synched throughout the day. So, if set to a 500 calorie deficit your allowance will end up 500 calories less than your burn for the day. The difference is where it starts, both starting points are based on estimates of what you might burn. The sedentary estimate assumes you will be sedentary, the personalized is based on your average calorie burn over the past few days. So, if I am active I usually burn an average of 1900 calories (some days more if especially active and some days less if not as much), but if 1900 is my recent  "average" and if I were set to lose one pound a week, my allowance would start around 1400 calories. If I were set to sedentary, on a day when I was very sedentary I burned about 1500 according to fitbit, so my sedentary allowance might start at 1000 (when on this setting it started lower, so whatever number fitbit uses was lower than 1500 for me). The difference is really just how it starts. I like personalized because usually I can pretty much eat my starting allowance and be fine unless my activity is especially unusual that day. And I don't like seeing the super low starting point with sedentary.