I need help on deciding what my activity level is?

salemxo

On a weekly basis, I walk for about 4 and a half hours (about 3 mph?) and I go on the elliptical trainer for an hour. Would you guys say I fall into the "lightly active" category?

Thanks

yarwell

no, sedentary and log the above activities as exercise.

Sued0nim

No your activity level is based on your life outside purposeful workouts ...desk job = sedentary

Daniilynn11

I've wondered that too. I'm a stay at home mom, for the time being. I go to the gym 5-6 days a week for about an hour and a half each day.

Would the gym + daily household chores count as lightly active? Or sedentary?

Eliz_99

I enter mine as sedentary as I do a desk job and log all exercise. If you're including gym workouts in your activity level then I wouldn't also log the exercise.

lemonsurprise

Agreed. And the same to you Daniilynn. Set as sedentary, use the pedometer in MFP if you have the app, log steps if not, log exercise too and eat half back.

Liftng4Lis

Your activity level is your normal daily activity. Exercise should be logged separately.

bwogilvie

If you follow MFP's method, you should exclude exercise when figuring your daily activity. I exercise about an hour a week, but I log it on MFP, so when I set my activity level, I chose sedentary. (I'm mostly a desk jockey at work.)

terbusha

I don't pay attention to the activity level. If you're wondering about that to find your best calorie level, you don't need it. I figure my optimal calorie level based on my fitness progress. What I do and what I recommend to people is to eat at a calorie level that allows you to make good progress towards your goal. If you are trying to lose weight, eat so you drop 1-2 lbs/week. This assumes an average calorie burn from you getting in all of your workouts. This will be different for everyone, so you'll have to do some trial and error to figure it out. I'd start ~1600 cal/day. Hit this goal, along with your macros and getting in your workouts, for 2 weeks. If you lose 1-2 lbs, you're good to go. If you lose too much, increase your intake and repeat. If you don't lose enough, reduce your intake a bit and repeat. After a few weeks, you'll figure out what works for you in your situation.

cwolfman13

If you're doing MFP as designed you do NOT include exercise in your activity level...you log exercise after the fact and then get allotted those calories. You have to be very careful in your burn estimations though.

salemxo

Thanks everyone, that makes much more sense now. I'm a student so I'm usually sitting in class or the library all day, so I'll put my activity level to sedentary then log exercises

kayleighalford9

i go with the lower level of calories as if i were not logging exercising.....working so far for me

salemxo

Also, how would I accurately log the calories I've burned from exercising? I'm always worried about over-estimating.

mbcieslak87

mazza_pants wrote: »

Also, how would I accurately log the calories I've burned from exercising? I'm always worried about over-estimating.

I typically don't log exercise calories anymore and use TDEE -20% instead. However, when I did use MFP + exercise calories, I usually took what MFP thought I would have burned and multiplied it by .75; that way I know I'm at least not over-estimating my burn. It seemed to work well for me.

salemxo

mbcieslak87 wrote: »

mazza_pants wrote: »

Also, how would I accurately log the calories I've burned from exercising? I'm always worried about over-estimating.

I typically don't log exercise calories anymore and use TDEE -20% instead. However, when I did use MFP + exercise calories, I usually took what MFP thought I would have burned and multiplied it by .75; that way I know I'm at least not over-estimating my burn. It seemed to work well for me.

Thank you, I'll try out the multiplying by 0.75 and see if that works for me!