Help needed

Chunky2Slinky19

'm new-ish and so confused about what to set my calories at.
I'm a mum to 2 girls and my activity levels vary. Some days I do around 12,000+ steps others I reach 6,000.
I swim once per week and walk everywhere.
And should i wear my fitbit or just log any "extra" calories from exercise
Tia x

cmriverside

How much weight do you need to lose to be in a healthy BMI?

When you signed up, the recommendation was to "Choose 1 pound per week weight loss." I would do that.

Here's a great guide: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

heybales

I'll mention the Fitbit is fine for the daily activity and changes, and of course any change in eating goals based on that variance.

For some workouts it might be easier to manually log a better estimated calorie burn.
You don't have to leave it off - Fitbit is a Replace only method - you add a workout and calorie burn, Fitbit replaces whatever it came up with already. Even when it may have a record already there with stats for you to view - your replacement is in the daily stats that actually is number MFP uses.

Swimming it's not likely to be good at - so manually log that on Fitbit honestly - did you really swim for 45 min at say vigorous pace - or was there 5 min slow warmup, or 5 min talking to girls on edge of pool or getting goggles reset or taking break, making it more like 35 or 30 min?

If walking workouts - Fitbit already tracking step-based stuff just fine.

PAV8888

Choose a random activity setting between sedentary and lightly active and use your Fitbit (logging activities it is unlikely to recognize on its own as per the instructions in the post above, and probably letting it be a third party estimator for anything it is likely to capture on its own).

Connect fitbit.com to trendweight.com to track a changes to your weight level over time. Fitbit can push your daily weigh in to both mfp and trendweight.

Adjust based on your results after four to six weeks or so.

It matters less to be 100% accurate and more to be as consistent as possible in your logging habits so that you can make meaningful adjustments