How many steps a day is "highly active?" And how many more would earn me extra food?

dashaclaire

So I have my settings on highly active. I'm a bartender and work 4 nights a week and use the free pacer iPhone app to track my steps (I'm planning on splurging on a misfit shine soon). I average around 15,000 steps a day. Nights I work I get closer to 20,000, days I'm off I always try to break 10,000.

I am 5'6ish and 154 lbs and losing weight at 1860 cals a day or less. So I am confident that I do quality as "highly active" but I am wondering at what number do I cross that line? And if I break 20,000 could I have an extra couple hundred calories? Should I add it as exercise? Thanks for your thoughts -hungry all the time:)

Talan79

Have you plugged your numbers into the Goal section? I've read on a few threads to set to sedentary, and let MFP give you exercise calories back. See if you can sync the two accounts.

dashaclaire

Well I can sync pacer but if I do any "real" exercise, it deducts those minutes from the exercise minutes pacer gives me? So I gave up on that method. My bartending shifts consist of 11 hours of intermittent walking so pacer doesn't really do the whole calories burnt well.

Talan79

I would think 11 hours is active to highly active. Since its 11 hours. This was posted on bodybuilding.com

Your exercise is not included in the activity level setting in MFP. This is a copy/paste from their site:

How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)

kdiamond

The steps alone are in the active range but is that all you do, or is there another form of intense exercise in there as well? If not I'd say lightly active.