Setting Activity Goals and Calories Burnt Working

Eilief29

I'm confused about how to set my goals for activity levels. I'm waitressing for about 6-8 hours, 4/5 times a week so would this fall under the lightly active or moderately active section. During my time off I'm pretty sedentary apart from exercise which I log in the diary. Also I've tried figuring out how many calories I burn when I am waitressing, and most sites say around 100 calories an hour for a 5'7" 135lbs woman, which means in a night I could burn up to 800 calories. Would this be included in the calorie recommendation if I set my activity at lightly active? I sometimes eat at the restaurant after work because I've been unable to eat before starting, but I'm trying to maintain and not go over too much so I start gaining. Does anyone have any advice?

debubbie

I would set it at moderately active and then not count the calories burned from work since you have told MFP that you are "exercising" while at work, otherwise it will be like you are double dipping. Try this for 4-6 weeks and evaluate how this worked for your goals. At 5'7" and 135 pounds, you sound like you are close a healthy weight. Are you trying to gain or lose weight?

sijomial

My advice would be don't expend too much time & effort over a setting that purely gives you a starting point.
So start with moderately active - see what happens over the course of a month and adjust from there.

You don't log your work as exercise BTW - wasn't clear if you thought you should be logging your waitressing or not.

Eilief29

Ok thanks I'll use that setting instead, I don't log my work as exercise, only the cardio I do as extra like walking/swimming/running. I'm pretty happy with my weight at the moment, I'd like to maybe drop a few more pounds but there is no rush for that to happen I'm looking more towards maintaining at the moment. I don't always reach the recommended calories anyway (2,250 at moderately active) so I thought maybe it was set too high