Sedentary or lightly active?

JenW70503

I have my activity level set as sedentary right now, which is fine, but I'm wondering if I set it right. I have a desk job where I'm sitting for 6-6.5 hours per day, which is why I chose that, but I also have five children at home so when I'm not at work I'm cooking, cleaning, playing with the kids, running errands (shopping, etc.), doing laundry, giving baths and so on. On a typical day, I get up at 6:30, pack lunches and get children awake and dressed and to school/daycare, then I go to work from 8:30-2:30 where I sit at a desk and answer phones. I pick up the kids from school at 3 and generally don't sit back down again for more than a minute or two until 6:30-7:00 after I finish housework, kid stuff, and cooking. I sit down to eat, then we usually talk/watch tv/play a game/etc. which is very sedentary until 8, and then we are up and getting kids bathed and ready for bed, then doing dinner dishes and wrapping up household chores which lasts until about 9. I don't care if I leave it at sedentary, because the less calories I eat the better, right? But I am just curious if I set everything up correctly.

LAWoman72

I have a very similar day to yours, except for actually driving to my job (I work from home), am very very hands-on with my kids and have basically all of the housework (and am particular about it) because my husband doesn't get home until 8:00 or so at night, and I am set on Sedentary.

When I do extra-hard housework, such as when I cleaned out the closets and was doing a lot of heavy lifting and carrying and actually was working up a sweat, I count that into exercise.

michaelputz

The difference between sedentary and lightly active is like 7000-8000 steps

LAWoman72

The thing is that as far as MFP's settings, they do count normal moving/running about in Sedentary. Lightly Active doesn't happen until you're doing some real additional exertion as compared to a normally active day.

There are all different definitions of Sedentary but if you're speaking specifically of MFP, when I was dong my settings, their definition did include getting up and doing things during one's day, but with a fair amount of sitting; i.e. a desk job.

JenW70503

Ok, thanks! I figured as much, but I wanted to be sure. I don't want to do anything wrong!

SLLRunner

LAWoman72 wrote: »

The thing is that as far as MFP's settings, they do count normal moving/running about in Sedentary. Lightly Active doesn't happen until you're doing some real additional exertion as compared to a normally active day.

There are all different definitions of Sedentary but if you're speaking specifically of MFP, when I was dong my settings, their definition did include getting up and doing things during one's day, but with a fair amount of sitting; i.e. a desk job.

That's a good point. I do sit at my desk, but I move a lot otherwise. And, if I need help from someone, I get up and go to their work space and ask for help, I don't use the phone or email a lot for that.