yes, this is another calorie ?

I would go between the two, eating more fuel on the days you use it and eating less on the days that you're less active. But I'm not an expert either. Remember to check your calories again once you start the 30DS and Ripped in 30.

For an example, today I worked 9 hours and was sitting for most of it. Because I was inactive most of the day I went for a 45 minute walk/run when I got home. I'm still going to hit 2000 calories burned for the day according to my bodybugg. I do try to get up and move around every hour or two at work but it wasn't a big spike in activity level. So I would just experiment and see how the weight loss goes with those calories.

I would say lightly active, and don't eat back exercise cals on the F2F plan. Lightly active, by their definition, is moderate activity 1-3x/week. Walking 2 miles in the morning definitely counts toward that.

you do not eat back your calories it figures them in I would set it at light activity too but I am obviously not an expert LOL

I set mine to sedentary so I can log the exercises. I think this is more accurate for me as, like you, I don't work out every day.

First off, 1,200 might not "be too low" since you aren't overweight. When you get in this range and are a small woman, there just isn't much wiggle room if you want to lose weight. You just have to BE CAREFUL that you are exercising and eating back when you get down around these low levels.

You are correct in that if you set your TDEE properly you shouldn't have to post and eat back your exercise. However, if I were you I would set my activity level at sedentary and hard post all my TRUE exercise (being "out and about" for a couple days a week doesn't really count as far as I am concerned, but I would hard post the walking 2 miles a day). You have to be VERY particular when you don't have much weight to lose, because if you are off by a little bit (say, 200 cals), then the system won't work right.

From your TDEE, you set your cut. So your sedentary TDEE is 1561 and say you want to lose 1 lb a week, which is a "healthy loss." That means since 3500 cals in a lb, 7 days in a week, you need a 500 cal deficit. Which, as you can see, would be 1,061 goal per day. So you CAN eat at this goal, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you are working out at least 200 cals off a day and eating back because it is going to be very difficult to get all your nutrients to run well. The other option is to take 15% or so of your TDEE off for a safer and less drastic cut, so about 1330 and have that as your goal. As you can see however, since that is only a 231 cut you would lose 1 lb every 15 days.

THIS IS ALL ASSUMING your BMR is EXACTLY average, which, I assure you, it ISN'T. But after you have at least 4 weeks under your belt you will start losing either faster or slower than your goal. If you are lucky, faster because your BMR is faster than normal, and you can up your cals accordingly. If you are unlucky, you will have to drop them to maintain your loss rate or drop how quickly you want to lose to like 1/2 lb a week (like the example above).

I must really be thick in the head because I still don't get it. To eat back or not eat back? Will I ever figure it out. Good luck!!

You CAN eat back if you want to. If you don't, it will just add to your cut:

Say your TDEE is 1700, your goal is 1 lb per week so you have a 1200 NET goal. If you work out and burn 200 cals, you can eat them back and maintain your 500 cal cut (leaving you with a 1200 NET but a 1400 total intake for the day). OR you can not eat back, and your cut will increase to 700 (leaving you with a 1000 NET but a 1200 intake for the day). Obviously if you don't eat back frequently but work out alot, you are going to lose faster than your goal, which may or may not be healthy depending on your stats.

http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

Go to ^^^^^ this website. I have a BMF and had metabolic testing done and this is the closest I've found to my "professional" numbers. Just go by the number of times you work out and find the number. It will be larger than 1200! WOO HOO! You may gain initially, but this still puts you at a deficit, so once your body trusts that you'll feed it again, the weight should come back off. I'm on week three of this. There is a group here called Eat More To Weigh Less with some awesome folks on there. :-)