I have the fitbit force, but what works for me is to see what activity level I am the most- for me, my work week 5 days is lightly to moderately active so I use that as my setting on MFP. On weekends it can be sedentary or highly active, depends on my race schedule and time with family.

So on any given day I wake to the 1730 allotment of calories which are derived from my "lightly active" allowance
By about noon I start getting a fitbit adjustment (fitbit is projecting because of my movement thus far, I will go on to burn more than the 2230 it estimated- and thus it gives me a positive adjustment and moves my calorie allowance up) so I get more food!!

Near the end of the day can be tricky If i have been go go go and then boom, stop and rest and do nothing for 2 hours- I may see fitbit take back some of those extra calories it originally gave me.
I try to end my evening with 100 calories in the green (i am also diabetic) so in the event I have a low blood sugar in the night and need juice, I have 100 cals to allow for that- Or those 100 cal deficits add up over the week and allow for a mini splurge hello EASTER CHOCOLATE


SO what I am really saying is pick the activity setting on MFP that suits you MOST of the time, and if in doubt pick lower cause fitbit will adjust you UP based on your activities if you just wear it all day, every day and make sure it is synced with MFP.

So when you did scooby calculations did you factor in all exercise? If so just eat same value every day. Tdee less 15%
Please guys correct me if I'm wrong tho as I'm am no expert but that's what I do. I also saw somewhere that if you have a heavy exercise day and you burn more, then you should eat back the difference.
For instance I had a huge burn yesterday unplanned... Boot camp. So I ate more yesterday.

Why are you trying to guess from 5 rough levels when you have a device that gives you personalized infinite levels?

You'll have to decide what plan you can stick to - TDEE deficit style with same goal daily (though that won't be enough for big training days frankly), or MFP style with reasonable deficit.

The advantage to same number daily is planning.

But if you have no problem getting in big adjustments, or eating big snack with exercise, then you can easily do MFP style too.

The point is to take a reasonable deficit, which you can every day.

If you can honestly meet your daily goal no matter how it changes and plan well enough to do so, use the MPF style and the Fitbit for what it does well.

Now - you of course must manually log exercise it's not going to estimate correctly.
Lifting, cycling, swimming, ect. Normally you could leave it to the running and walking estimates itself, but below is why you shouldn't.

Now, 15% of 2000 to 3000 is 300 to 450 deficit, so that much would be reasonable, but with MFP style, you can only set one number.

So probably best bet is set MFP activity level to whatever is true for your non-exercise daily life, which may be sedentary, may be lightly active. Doesn't matter much, Fitbit will give adjustments, but it does start then with better reality initial eating goal.
If your sedentary days get big adjustments, then it's not set high enough.

Set weight loss goal to 1/2 lb weekly. That is lower than the 300 which is 15%, but close enough at 250 cal.

Log all your exercise, even running and walking, with more accurate estimates.
But log it with the same 15% deficit first and eat back that reduced amount.

Why? Because if it had been included in the TDEE deficit method, it would have had 15% taken off there too. You might as well get bigger deficit on days you are doing more.

Now the Fitbit adjustments will still come across for daily life that is more or less active than expected, so with positive and negative adjustments on - merely meet your daily goal.

And to above point on training - you do need those carbs. Your training, body is trying to store more for what you are asking from it - give it to it.

40/30/30 is likely overkill protein for your plan.
0.82 grams protein per lb of weight is already overkill, but good setting.
0.35 grams fat per lb of weight is just fine.
That should leave enough carbs on the big exercise days to replenish so you are ready for next workout.

And totally agree that with some types of training, TDEE deficit style just doesn't work well.
For a week with several big training workouts, it means the TDEE is actually well below actual TDEE on several days, and well above on rest days.
With deficit in place then, it means rest days could have no deficit actually, and big days aren't enough food really, too big a deficit.

But reasonable deficit always works well.
And to Springfield's comment above, reasonable if performance is the focus, may be even less deficit than normal.

Heybales - thank you very much. It seems I've been coming close to the 40/30/30 - especially on training days. I'm a bit slack with protein on sedentary days (must fix that).

So I've set my daily calorie goal to 2000 (this is me sitting on my butt all day.)

My Fitbit and MFP are linked.

I have started to use Map My Fitness to log runs & rides although I do find this grossly over-estimates my calorie burn (1000 cals for a 1hr bike ride - I don't think so!). I usually wear my Garmin HRM so have been manually changing those calorie burns to match the Garmin. This gives me more accuracy - if I trust Garmin!

And I think I will employ the method of MFP - eating 2000 and logging exercise.

But to help myself plan, I will pre-plan my days when I have scheduled training. So if I know I'm going for a run/ride, I can increase my calories to suit (I have a rough idea of these calorie burns) and spread them out over the day.

The days of planning for 2000 and then getting to 7pm and suddenly realising I need to eat another 600cals are over.

Now all I have to do is make myself eat more - but that's another story. It's easy in theory to say I need to eat more to help my body recover but in practice, I seem to under-eat rather than over-eat these days - which isn't ideal either.

Anyway, thank you all very much for your replies. Now all I have to do is walk the walk, so to speak.

If I hit an avg HR of 153 for 1 hr, which is 79% of my tested HRmax, based on my VO2max test, I burn slightly over 1000 calories.
I can easily avg 158 or higher if truly just 1 hr, getting 1120.

So 1000 an hr isn't hard if in decent shape. And I'll bet you are.

My SportTrack app, likely using the same formula for biking as those sites, is usually within 25 calories of avgHR and VO2max formula, as long as ride was 1 hr or longer, and not too much city traffic with coasting slowly to lights.

What Garmin do you have?
I have 310XT, and for a while the Garmin Connect site was displaying what VO2max the unit was calculating based on given stats - it's was far below my tested. It was exactly what I thought their formula was coming up with though, and if I wanted to mess with it, could adjust my height and age to get it closer to reality. But I gave up, just easier using my personal formula.

When you manually set your net eating goal, and sync the Fitbit up, it'll mess stuff up, usually.
Because MFP is still basing adjustments on it's estimate of your non-exercise maintenance, and the math is done on comparing that to Fitbit TDEE, not your eating goal.
But if you can pick a weight loss goal that ends up near 2000, it'll work best. Just a thought.
Though, perhaps you aren't trying to lose right now, just reset?

To some quick calories, a chocolate milk usually has close to the 4:1 ratio carbs:protein for best glycogen uptake and replenish within 30 min.
Clif bars have exactly that ratio, and 250 cal.
Equate Nutritional Shake is right there too.

So there are easy ways to down some quick very useful calories to setup next day's workout very well.

Also, a pre-workout snack can help too. Like you said spreading it out. I was always too fearful I'd eat more earlier and then workout wouldn't happen. So I'd reserve 400 calories about 45 min prior, so I'd know I was going.

Ok, see, excellent VO2max, you'd have to do some very specific workouts to increase that much more. Or lose weight.
Did you set the Garmin athlete mode to yes?

And is underestimating not a bad thing? That means bigger deficit than you are planning in that case. And if you don't know, you don't know how big a real deficit you might have. Frequent intense exercise is already a stress on the body, deficit too big in addition is bad combo.

For 3 months prior to last VO2max test I was basing calorie burn on a prior test. Come to find out, I was underestimating by about 150-200 cal per workout, with extra weekly deficit at least 1000.
Well, 1000 in addition to what was supposed to be a reasonable deficit made it very unreasonable, and explained the failure of the deficit to actually cause any good results. Stagnant results was all I got. Actually, after 6 weeks of some badly timed spin classes and my intensity level, bad loss of LBM during that time.

Check out the spreadsheet on my profile page. Garmin tab.
That's the formula that First Beat on Garmin is using to estimate your VO2max, from the study referenced.
Now, they did away with you selecting from the table (manual may still refer to you doing it though), and it just looks at its own history, I don't know how far back it looks, but figure at least 2-3 weeks.
You put in what it sees, and you'll see the VO2max it's using. (this is what their Connect site showed for a couple weeks that matched what I came up with dead on).
You put in your own tested VO2max, and it'll tell you the height change to make so it can match.

Because the study estimating VO2max from that formula topped out and stopped progressing after a certain point. First Beat tried to extend it by having those higher training levels, but it still may not go high enough. Like my own personal training was always within the 3-7 hrs weekly, so I didn't get their increased potential. But smart training still allowed a VO2max of 59.5, increasing to 63 as weight went down.

Oh yeah, use the HRM tab if your weight went down since the VO2max test, as less weight means higher VO2 even without improving fitness level.
Fill in stats at top and far right.

Your huge weight fluctuations, if anything over 455 grams in 2 weeks, is water weight.
Always keep math in mind for weight lost or gained.
250 calories over true TDEE daily for 2 weeks would result in just 455 grams of gain. That's it. Same with a loss.
Anything more or faster is water weight.
Glucose stores in muscles, with required attached water.

Weigh on only valid days to minimize that.
Morning after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout.

So if you are doing reset right now, just set MFP to maintain, and let it pick the calorie goal, though you'll need to change the macros to better protein, like 2 x the default grams shown, keeping fat to grams shown at default. Or what I mentioned in prior post.
Then sync Fitbit so your non-exercise daily goal changes as needed.
Log exercise on MFP with calorie burns, and the sync will replace Fitbit's estimate.

What's nice with this is if a hard workout makes you more lazy for rest of the day, the sync will take away some calories. Now, with the workout you are eating more, just not as much. Sometimes it's interesting to see a big 2 hr 1200 cal workout causes you to move 300 cal less for rest of the day compared to normal.