Activity Level

ftsolk

I'm trying to set my base calorie goal for MFP, and I'm having a hard time figuring out my activity level.

According to my Fitbit Premium account, I'm considered "Active." I work a retail job five days a week (with Sundays and one weekday- usually Tuesdays) off. On work days, I average 16,000 to 23,000 steps. On my days off, I get around 7,000-10,000 steps. Fitbit averages my total activity level on both work and non-work days to give me my overall activity level, but I'm not sure if I should put on here that I'm active or not.

I do have negative calorie adjustments enabled if that makes a difference.

My initial reaction is to put Sedentary as my activity level, but I feel that may encourage me to under-eat, so I feel like I should give myself a higher calorie goal to start.

I am also a premium member of this site, bit I dislike the idea of setting a different calorie goal for my work days and days off as those days can vary from week to week.

queenliz99

I would put a number in and watch your weight for a week or so and make changes up or down. All the numbers in this website are just estimates.

malibu927

With negative adjustments enabled, it really doesn't matter what level you set yourself for. MFP will even out. And even on sedentary, you'd get a massive adjustment on work days. Right now at just short of 15,000 steps (retail job as well) it's giving me 848 calories on top of my goal. At lightly active I think it would switched about 250-300 of those calories over to MFP.

Kalikel

I don't do the fitbit thing or understand what "negative calorie adjustments" are, but if I were you, I'd set it at Lightly Active and see how that went.

You can always change it if it isn't working.

scolaris

My MFP & Fitbit never ever matched which kind of drove me crazy. So I created a weekly calorie budget based on my future goal weight and current activity levels combined as a TDEE estimate. Which meant once & for all I really needed to decide how active I truly am! (Weekly average is fine for this, so don't worry about your individual days.) I walk a minimum of 100k steps a week; anything I don't get walking at school as a sub I go out and get in speed walks or hikes. I do two HIIT sessions a week in hour long dance classes. I do some body weight training at least every other day. That makes me 'very active' because my average calorie burn is at least 750 a day. I budget about 100 calories for each mile walked, 330 for each dance class with HIIT, and 330 for an entire week of body weight stuff.
I would say you sound like you are active at the very least. It's certainly okay the way you're doing it now. But if you ever switch to TDEE for maintenance you will need to get your activity estimate right.

ftsolk

Unfortunately, my activity levels can vary quite a bit from day to day and week to week depending on my work schedule. I don't do much purposeful exercise. I need to change that, but it's happening verrryyyy slowly.

I decided to add up my calorie burn for the past week (my weight loss week runs Saturday through Friday since I go to my Weight Watchers meetings Saturday mornings). Even with a sick day in bed yesterday, my average calorie burn for the week was around 2,630 calories (rounded to the nearest 10 calories). So, I could plan to eat 1,880 calories a day and lose about 1.5 pounds a week, but I feel like this method has its downfalls. What if I DO start working out? (Although, I can't imagine I'd work out enough to burn an additional 1,750 calories each week, so depending on my activity level, I'd probably flux between losing 1.5 to 2 pounds a week (I wouldn't want to set my goal to lose 2 pounds because the 1.5 pounds a week option gives me a little more flexibility).

If I set one daily goal and turn off the Fitbit calorie adjustment, will that information still show up in my weekly overview? I might not, necessarily, want to have my goals change based on activity from a day to day basis, but I would love that information in my Weekly Overview so I can see my overall progress, and see how much "damage" I'll do by going over, etc.