Lightly Active or Active?

yummypotroast

Hi all,

MFP currently has my calorie goal set at 1380, based on me being 23 years old at 157 cm (5'2") and 49 kg (108 lb.) I work as a teacher, mainly sitting at a desk, which is why I chose the Lightly Active activity level but I feel that 1380 is not enough for me. Furthermore, I do aerobics for 1 hour 4 times/week and pole dance once a week. Should I change my activity level to Active instead? I don't want to enter exercise separately, as it does not seem accurate and I don't want to skew my calorie goal.

Thanks in advance for your help!

cnbbnc

My understanding is that a job entailing a good amount of desk time is considered sedentary. I'm a dental hygienist and spend more time walking the office than sitting with patients so I put myself as lightly active. I think moderately active is for those who are doing physical labor.

If you feel like your cals aren't enough, I would either stay at lightly active and not eat the exercise cals back, or change to sedentary and not eat them. See how you do with either of those.

yummypotroast

I guess I need to restrict a little more if I want to see results haha. Thanks for the input!

89GermanG

Are you trying to lose weight? I'm 5'2 and MFP set my calorie goal also to 1380 calories. I'm 183lb (83kg) and I know for that hight you should weight between 49kg-55kg. I'm eating 1380 calories to lose weight so I think you should eat more than that. To maintain my weight I must eat at least 1600 calories a day so try to eat at least 200 more calories if you are trying to maintain your weight.

yummypotroast

Thanks for the reply! Hmm maybe I should just monitor my weight and see if I am losing with my current calorie intake, which is about 1400-1500, and adjust accordingly. It is just a little frustrating to see myself in the red all the time haha!

cnbbnc

yummypotroast wrote: »

Thanks for the reply! Hmm maybe I should just monitor my weight and see if I am losing with my current calorie intake, which is about 1400-1500, and adjust accordingly. It is just a little frustrating to see myself in the red all the time haha!

That's pretty much what I'm doing. My weight loss completely stalled when eating the cals recommended to me, so now I'm tracking and playing with things on my own to see what amount leads to my losing about 1lb/wk. I think these apps are good to give us a close approximation of what we should be doing, but sometimes we may need to tweak things a bit on our own.

shadow2soul

yummypotroast wrote: »

Hi all,

MFP currently has my calorie goal set at 1380, based on me being 23 years old at 157 cm (5'2") and 49 kg (108 lb.) I work as a teacher, mainly sitting at a desk, which is why I chose the Lightly Active activity level but I feel that 1380 is not enough for me. Furthermore, I do aerobics for 1 hour 4 times/week and pole dance once a week. Should I change my activity level to Active instead? I don't want to enter exercise separately, as it does not seem accurate and I don't want to skew my calorie goal.

Thanks in advance for your help!

I ran your numbers through Scooby's Accurate Calorie Calulator since you said you don't want to eat exercise calories back.

for 1-3 hrs/light exercise a week : 1316 calories (for approx 0.7 lbs per week loss/20% cut)
for 3-5 hrs/moderate exercise a week: 1483 calories (for approx 0.7 lbs per week loss/20% cut)

So for 0.7 lbs per week loss, somewhere in the range of 1316 - 1483 would probably work.

If you don't feel that is enough, maybe try a less aggressive goal like:

1398-1576 for 0.6 lbs per week loss (15% cut of 1-3 hrs and 3-5 hrs)
1480-1669 for 0.3 lbs per week loss (10% cut of 1-3 hrs and 3-5 hrs)

Keep in mind your already at a healthy weight and for those of us at a healthy weight, weight loss is a bit harder because we have less room to create a deficit (which also makes it slower and more frustrating).** Also, you may have to adjust your calories after 4 weeks or so. If your losing faster than predicted, that means you can safely eat a bit more. If your losing less than expected than you will need to cut some calories.

**That statement is based on my own experience. I won't say it's not hard at higher weight, because it is. However I have definitely struggled more since I got to about the middle of a healthy BMI than I ever did when I was overweight or when I was obese.

3dogsrunning

yummypotroast wrote: »

Hi all,

MFP currently has my calorie goal set at 1380, based on me being 23 years old at 157 cm (5'2") and 49 kg (108 lb.) I work as a teacher, mainly sitting at a desk, which is why I chose the Lightly Active activity level but I feel that 1380 is not enough for me. Furthermore, I do aerobics for 1 hour 4 times/week and pole dance once a week. Should I change my activity level to Active instead? I don't want to enter exercise separately, as it does not seem accurate and I don't want to skew my calorie goal.

Thanks in advance for your help!

The MFP method specifically depends on you added exercise in. If you don't want to do that, you could use a TDEE calculator and set your own goal on MFP.
You could use the active modifier. But it may or may not be the right amount for you.

I also would not consider a teacher sedentary.

yummypotroast

Thanks for the advice! I agree that the TDEE method is more suitable. I will manually set my goal on MFP. I'm fine with losing slower since I don't want to change my eating habits too much!

Liftng4Lis

Lightly active and earn more through exercise.