Lightly active or active?

kewierschke2

I have my activity level set to lightly active. At work I get 5 miles of walking in a day according to my fitness tracker. I do 5-6 hours of moderate to intense cardio per week. Should I change my activity level to active or does it really matter? They left it kinda vague with only showing job type activity.

malibu927

MFP does not calculate exercise into its activity level. If you have your tracker and MFP linked, I'd just leave it on lightly active, or even drop to sedentary. That's what I did when I had them together.

TimothyFish

Sounds like sedentary to me, given that you should log the 5-6 hours of exercise separately.

marissafit06

I think this is a correct explanation;

The Activity Level factors MFP uses are based on statistics for average people, not athletes or someone bedridden. The higher your BMR, the more cals Activity Level adds. Also, the higher your LBM (lean body mass – how much muscle you have), the higher Activity Level factor you need, to account for more calories burned even when at rest. This is where many lean, reasonably muscular people err, as they don’t compensate for higher muscle mass. If you choose the wrong Activity Level setting, you may be eating too much or too little.

Sedentary: Adds about 250-500 cals/day for most people. Appropriate for: Those who work at a desk job AND are sedentary at home, with light or no exercise and low LBM; Usually NOT appropriate for stay-at-home moms/dads with young children.

Lightly Active: Adds 450-700. Appropriate for: Most people with young children, who are otherwise sedentary; Many who have a desk job but exercise moderately and have a moderate LBM%; Those who stand a lot at work, but don’t really walk around a lot or lift heavy items, etc.

Active: Adds 700-1000. Appropriate for those who have an active job (some nurses, waitresses, laborers, etc) and exercise moderately-frequently, and especially those who have a high LBM%.

Very Active: Adds 950-1400. Appropriate for those who have a very active job (trainers, some laborers, some athletes, some warehouse workers), and exercise frequently and have a high or very high LBM%.

marissafit06

Basically, if you have an active job where you are moving a lot, then MFP calculates that "exercise" into your basic calorie allotment. If you do 5 miles per day everyday, I would set it to lightly active or active.

It doesn't really matter though if your tracker and MFP are linked. If you set MFP to sedentary and walk a lot each day, the tracker will give you extra "exercise" calories from your daily movements. It's likely that those extra calories are what MFP would have given you anyways had you set a higher base activity level in the first place.

The benefit of setting your MFP to sedentary would be that on days you aren't working, you won't have an inflated calorie allotment based on activity that you aren't doing, because you aren't at work.

tomatoey

How long have you had it at Lightly Active? What's happening on the scale, and how's your hunger and energy?

I think it's better to start with as much food as you can get away with and only cut down if you're not seeing results. If it's less than what you were eating before, you'll lose (maybe slowly, but maybe that's ok). So you could just log your regular intake - without making any changes to diet - for a few weeks, compare that to your scale, and subtract 10-20% from that intake number.

kewierschke2

Thanks that helps a lot, marissafit. I don't see why it would be suggested to go sedentary, as I'm on the go from the time I go to work until I get off followed by exercise. Setting to a lower activity is only going to ensure in not getting proper nutrition since as you change them macros and calorie goals change.

Would be like doing intense exercise but only eat 1200cal a day which according to tdee calculators I've checked puts me at a 50% calorie deficit and then only telling me to eat 50G of protein a day because I'm sedentary.

rmtuesley

I think it depends more on how YOU want to track. I set mine at sedentary, but link my Fitbit to it. My fitbit will add in all the calories I have burned. If you are set to active, it will still figue it and add only any additional you may need (if you burned more than "active"). I like being able to see each day what I have actually burned, and if a have a lazy day or 2, my calories are correct. It all works the same, just a personal preference.

kewierschke2

tomatoey wrote: »

How long have you had it at Lightly Active? What's happening on the scale, and how's your hunger and energy?

I think it's better to start with as much food as you can get away with and only cut down if you're not seeing results. If it's less than what you were eating before, you'll lose (maybe slowly, but maybe that's ok). So you could just log your regular intake - without making any changes to diet - for a few weeks, compare that to your scale, and subtract 10-20% from that intake number.

I've had it set to lightly active since I started 65 days ago. But 3 weeks ago joined a gym and finally dropped from 2lbs a week to 1.5lbs in settings to see if I can slow my progress. On avg other than 2 weeks where I pretty much didn't see the scale move I'm losing double what I have it set for.

Setting it to 1.5 has given me an extra 150 cals to eat, which helped somewhat with hunger/energy. I just changed it a week ago and figured I would give it a coupleto see the trend a little better.

Like I said with exercising I want to be getting enough of the important stuff and just leaving weight loss purr week the same yet changing activity levels changes macros. That's why I was curious.