workout tracking?

redrose129
redrose129 Posts: 57 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I've been tracking my workouts everyday thanks to a buddy I met on MFP. The question I have is, do you track every min you do "exercise" you do, OR your planned workouts only?

I went to the gym this morning and took a spinning class ( that was my planned workout for today) After I picked my daughter up from school, as a reward, we went swimming. I lap swam for an hour, taking breaks here & there. I was thinking about logging it but wanted to hear what others say. Would you?

My thought is I should only log my planned workouts...and chalk the rest up to fun.

Your thoughts?

;)

Replies

  • TheShrinkingKween
    TheShrinkingKween Posts: 91 Member
    If it's exercise, I would log it! I don't know if you eat back your calories or not, but some would log it since that means they can eat more that day. I would say some of it would depend on how you have your activity levels set. If you are set at sedentary, then definitely log that swimming. If you have yourself set for an activity level that would encompass that swim, then chalk it up to fun. I hope that made sense! LOL
  • NaomiJFoster
    NaomiJFoster Posts: 1,450 Member
    Lap swimming is definitely exercise!

    I consider the things I do pretty much every day, things that are part of my job or part of my life...those are not exercise. Grocery shopping is not exercise, playing on the playground and doing swimming lessons with my class is not exercise, housecleaning is not exercise. Those things are already accounted for when I set my profile to 'moderately active lifestyle' or whatever it says. But talking a walk with my husband (who is over a foot taller than me and walks very fast) is exercise. Moving furniture is exercise. Playing Frisbee in the park on the weekend is exercise. Workouts are exercise, no matter what time of day or how many times a day they happen. Walking up the stairs in my own home (one floor) is not exercise. Walking up the stair of a highrise office building to get to the tenth floor is exercise.
  • Jaminjo2
    Jaminjo2 Posts: 31 Member
    Heck, have you looked at what in the exercise database? Looks to me like you can log darn near anything. Because you said "lap swimming on and off for an hour..." I might record 30 or 40 minutes instead of the hour. Depends what you felt your effort level was.
  • redrose129
    redrose129 Posts: 57 Member
    thank you for your replies! I am set to sedentary but do not eat back burned calories. Since I do not log my meals, here, I will only log my scheduled workouts. I just started tracking my meals, this week, on paper; it works better for me ;)

    xoxo
    besos!
  • NaomiJFoster
    NaomiJFoster Posts: 1,450 Member
    I strongly urge you to play around with logging both exercise and food on here. It's a great system. The site does all the math for you. It makes it very visible and tangible to track where your intake of food adds up and your burning of calories subtracts, and you can see the end result. I started out only tracking exercise too. I did that for about a month, and did not record meals at all. I really thought I had a handle on it. But then when I started logging food too, well it really made a difference. I don't know if you've tried it on here yet or not. If you've tried and didn't like it, well stick with what you're doing. But if you haven't tried yet, you might want to play around with it a bit. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

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