Choosing the correct activity level
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tinkerbellang83 wrote: »mjtaylor87 wrote: »honkytonks85 wrote: »Found this and thought it was actually useful:
When you have to find out how many calories you burn in a day, you put your info in a calculator and it undoubtedly asks for your activity level. So what do you choose? Here are the meaning of the activity levels:
Sedentary
If you’re sedentary, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
No moderate of vigorous activities.
Unless you do at least 30 minutes per day of intentional exercise, you are considered sedentary.
Spending most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
The majority of people will be considered sedentary.
Lightly Active
If you’re lightly active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 30 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 130-160 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time to achieve the same goal. For example, 15-20 minutes of vigorous activity, such as aerobics, skiing or jogging on a daily basis would put you in this category.
Spending a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
Active
If you’re active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 1 hour and 45 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 470-580 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time. For example, jogging for 50 minutes per day.
Spending a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
Very Active
If you’re very active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 4 hours and 15 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 1,150-1400 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time. For example, jogging for 2 hours minutes per day.
Spending most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
SOURCE: http://antranik.org/proper-activity-level-for-calorie-intake/
Ok i dont remember what i chose when i set up but i think i need to lower it. how do i do that?
Change your settings in goals (guided set up)
thank you so much this has been beyond helpful to me.1 -
OrionEridanus wrote: »honkytonks85 wrote: »To be fair, weight lifting itself doesn't burn a lot of calories, not enough to justify an active level. . . I wouldn't add any calories in for weight lifting but if you think you should, I'd be adding 200 calories for a session at the most. I prefer to go with sedentary then just add in my cardio calories.
I find this statement interesting because according to my Fitbit I burn 600-700calories an hour on the treadmill. And when I lift I burn between 350-400 an hour. Now, while they are not equal, and the treadmill work certainly burns more, in no, way, shape, or form is 350-400 calories "not a lot"
Log your weights. It makes a difference.0 -
ThePopcornMaker wrote: »I go to the gym 5-6 times a week for 45 mins to do weightlifting but MFP doesn't let you calculate calories for anything other than cardio. I am also in college so I have to walk around campus daily. I set my activity level to 'Active' to compensate for the lack of calorie estimates for weights. I want to know if I'm justified in doing this. Also if I do cardio I add the extra calories in with the app.
Any reply would be great
There is a general weighlifting entry under cardio. You do burn a bit extra (but not remotely near the same amount as cardio). MFP gives me about 100 calories for a typical session.
ETA: correction... it's ~120 for my typical session (the last session estimated as 100 calories was shorter than typical, although that had more to do with fast availability of equipment and not having to re-rack a ton of @sshats' weights).
(it is proportional to weight.. quick data taken from 1posted study:
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ThePopcornMaker wrote: »I go to the gym 5-6 times a week for 45 mins to do weightlifting but MFP doesn't let you calculate calories for anything other than cardio. I am also in college so I have to walk around campus daily. I set my activity level to 'Active' to compensate for the lack of calorie estimates for weights. I want to know if I'm justified in doing this. Also if I do cardio I add the extra calories in with the app.
Any reply would be great
There is a general weighlifting entry under cardio. You do burn a bit extra (but not remotely near the same amount as cardio). MFP gives me about 100 calories for a typical session.
ETA: correction... it's ~120 for my typical session (the last session estimated as 100 calories was shorter than typical, although that had more to do with fast availability of equipment and not having to re-rack a ton of @sshats' weights).
(it is proportional to weight.. quick data taken from 1posted study (weight is in pounds below):
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ThePopcornMaker wrote: »I go to the gym 5-6 times a week for 45 mins to do weightlifting but MFP doesn't let you calculate calories for anything other than cardio. I am also in college so I have to walk around campus daily. I set my activity level to 'Active' to compensate for the lack of calorie estimates for weights. I want to know if I'm justified in doing this. Also if I do cardio I add the extra calories in with the app.
Any reply would be great
Look for a strength training entry under cardio to get a burn estimate. Though it isn't much, so I would say active is probably too high for you.
Co-signed. Weight lifting in and of itself does not burn that many calories. It does have many other benefits. Log it in separately and don't include it in your activity level. You can use other sites like Sparkpeople to get a comparative burn and see how the numbers compare.1 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »heathervallon wrote: »Is a nurse (senior's residence) sedentary, lightly active or active? I.e. I log on average 10kms a shift - will that count as exercise or lifestyle?
Definitely not "sedentary" or "lightly active". Probably "active". And I'd call that "lifestyle" rather than "exercise".
I'm set to "active" with FitBit tweaking my calories. If I only get 10,000 steps in a day (8 km for me), I break even and "active" is the correct setting. Usually, I get between 15,000 and 25,000 steps and "very active" isn't high enough.
IMO, the easiest way to estimate your activity level is to find a cheap pedometer and wear it for a week or two, recording your total number of steps every day.
"Sedentary" is less than 4,000 steps/day
"Lightly active" is about 4,000-10,000 steps/day
"Active" is about 10,000-16,000 steps/day
"Very active" is more than 16,000 steps/day
If you're right at the bottom of a range, you might want to choose the range below to allow for a few inaccuracies in logging.
i d say that active is 10000-12000 and very active is over 120001 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »IMO, the easiest way to estimate your activity level is to find a cheap pedometer and wear it for a week or two, recording your total number of steps every day.
"Sedentary" is less than 4,000 steps/day
"Lightly active" is about 4,000-10,000 steps/day
"Active" is about 10,000-16,000 steps/day
"Very active" is more than 16,000 steps/day
If you're right at the bottom of a range, you might want to choose the range below to allow for a few inaccuracies in logging.
MFP defines
sedentary = BMR x 1.25
ligtly active = BMR x 1.4
active = BMR x 1.6
very active = BMR x 1.8
Most people get "positive adjustments" i.e. extra calories, when their activity levels exceed:
sedentary ~ 3500 steps
lightly active ~ 7500 steps
active ~ 12,500 steps
very active ~15500 steps
MFP expects you to log any "exercise" that is not part of your base activity.
While in many respects it makes sense to split things into "base activity of daily living" and "deliberate exercise" there is nothing magical about how the calories got burned.
The only thing that matters is that you don't under or over count.
Note that sedentary means... sedentary. It represents an activity level that involves less than 35 minutes of movement in a day. MOST people on MFP who think of themselves as sedentary... AREN'T. (and, of course, some people who DON'T, ARE. but that's another story).
sedentary up to 5000
lightly active up to 7500
active 10000
very active 125003 -
This definition hinges on whether you are logging and eating your exercise calories back or not. If you aren't this works if you are this does not work.0
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The activity level throws me off as well. I work in office sit down for 6 hours a days so I set mfp to sedentary. In a day i usually get anywhere for 10,000-15,000. I go to the gym 3 days a week. I consider myself sedentary because i sit 6 hours a day 5 days a week. Is this correct?*
edited for typo*0 -
The activity level throws me off as well. I work in office sit down for 6 hours a days so I set mfp to sedentary. In a day i usually get anywhere for 10,000-15,000. I go to the gym 3 days a week. I consider myself sedentary because i sit 6 hours a day 5 days a week. Is this correct?*
edited for typo*
What are you using to track your steps? Easiest thing to do is set your activity level to Sedentary, let your fitbit or whatever send calorie adjustments to MFP, and log your gym separately if your fitbit isn't doing that.
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I stopped reading at the definition of sedentary because that's wrongIf you can walk the dog, mow the lawn, and garden, and remain sedentary, I think you must have a very small dog, a lawn of astroturf, and a window garden.
Other than that, it looks pretty right to me. Thanks for the post!
Agree with the critique of Sedentary.
Are they defining "walking the dog" like my former landlord did - walk the dog out to the back yard and stop there? My mom and brother's dog gets several miles per day. Two miles = 4,400 steps for me, and my Fitbit One starts giving me calories at under 3,000 steps.
What kind of gardening are they talking about? My mom struggles to stay above Underweight because of all the gardening she does. "Gardening" is just too vague. This weekend, I beat the heck out of my body putting in a circle garden under a tree, and no way was this "sedentary".
Also, as others have covered, this is just not how MFP works.2 -
kshama2001 wrote: »The activity level throws me off as well. I work in office sit down for 6 hours a days so I set mfp to sedentary. In a day i usually get anywhere for 10,000-15,000. I go to the gym 3 days a week. I consider myself sedentary because i sit 6 hours a day 5 days a week. Is this correct?*
edited for typo*
What are you using to track your steps? Easiest thing to do is set your activity level to Sedentary, let your fitbit or whatever send calorie adjustments to MFP, and log your gym separately if your fitbit isn't doing that.
I'm tracking my steps w/ the Samsung fit watch so I did set at sedentary and mfp adjust calories burned from my watch0 -
I do construction, work with bricking... i spend the whole day from 8-6 lifting up bricks and wlking the wheeler, should i consider being very active?2
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I would say active or very active and add any separate exercises you do as well.0
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If I go twice a week to play football (on mondays and fridays) for like 1 hour, shoud I choose lightly active or sedentary?
The rest of the days I am pretty much sedentary and that category suits me for 5 out of 7 days. I also have to mention that in those days when I play football I don't go to the gym, they are like rest days but not really 😂0 -
I know this is on old thread but this is something I've bee trying to figure out for a while as I don't believe setting active and allowing my Apple Watch to interface exercise is accurate. I'd effectively be allowing myself way to many calories to eat due to recording the activity twice.
I've set my activity to 'Not very Active (the lowest setting)' as I sit a desk for a large part of my day, I then allow Under Armour Record for weight training workouts and Strava for runs to sync to MFP. I know I'm not going to far wrong using the goal based on low activity plus the red ring on my apple watch.
For me this makes the most sense as currently I'm set at lose 2lbs a week so goal is 1500 plus whatever I burn which I feel is more accurate.
On average with my goal set at lose 2lbs per week and the lowest activity level combined with syncing I've averaged 1.92lbs per week. Had I used say moderate and still synced my activities i'd have gone over my true macro targets by double counting exercise.0 -
Darrensmith_ wrote: »I know this is on old thread but this is something I've bee trying to figure out for a while as I don't believe setting active and allowing my Apple Watch to interface exercise is accurate. I'd effectively be allowing myself way to many calories to eat due to recording the activity twice.
I've set my activity to 'Not very Active (the lowest setting)' as I sit a desk for a large part of my day, I then allow Under Armour Record for weight training workouts and Strava for runs to sync to MFP. I know I'm not going to far wrong using the goal based on low activity plus the red ring on my apple watch.
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As long as you enable Negative adjustments, it should take back anything that would be double counted.2 -
Sedentary would still probably be the best for you since all your activity is coming from tracked purposeful exercise. (You'll get more calories rewarded to you after the run when you are hungry, versus having it yank calories away throughout the day if you skip your run)2
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