Hey fitness buffs, I need help figuring out my activity/calorie level!

I know a million people ask about the activity level thing, and I'm sure you're all sick of answering but I need help. I'm trying to figure out how many calories I should be eating a day. I don't know if I should put sedentary and then log my exercise, or put light activity and log my exercise, or put moderate activity and not log it at all? Or some combination of the above.

Any advice is helpful

I am: 5'6". 124 lbs. 21 years old.

I do this, day to day: Get up early, am in school most of the day and participate actively.
I have pilates for 50 minutes 3x a week(MWF). I am new at it but participate pretty hard and get a good work out.

Directly after pilates I go to the gym and do weight training for about 45 minutes on the free-motion weight machines, pushing myself pretty hard(Im not one of those women that doesn't want visible muscles).  I started weight traning/gym going the first week of october, but am progressively adding weight.

After I do weights I burn between 250-350 cal on the treadmill, either with 1/2 hour mid level cardio or 45 min. lighter cardio.

Thursdays I do 1/2 hour-1 hour cardio and burn about 300 cal
I take tuesdays/saturdays off from the gym.
Sundays I do a longer cardio set and burn around 500.

When I'm at home, I'm usually at the computer doing homework, but I get up every few hours to stretch, make tea/food, laundry or something.


I havent been doing this routine for that long- a month or so- and before that I wasn't so heavily active, but I was restricing calories a ton.

I am currently eating around 1200 a day, and have started trying to eat 1300 on days I do weights. I have been hovering at 123.5 ish for a month or more, but I am starting to some muscle development.My goal is to reduce fat and build muscle. I am comfortable with my size, but last I checked I had an unhealthy body composition so I am trying to add back muscle I lost from months of starvation dieting, plus add some on top of that.


What should I be setting the calculators at, and how many cals should I be eating?

I'm 5'6" and 124, too.  :)  I'm 24 years old.

I use "light activity" and log all my exercise in addition to that.  I live in New York without a car so I walk A LOT and I don't count that as exercise, which is why I chose "light".  If you're a student, unless your campus is super spread out, you're going to be sitting most of the time, so I'd say go with "sedentary" and log all your activity.

Good luck!