What activity level is this?

autumnsholokhov

I always am confused by activity levels. Maybe someone can help.

I do 40 minutes of walking/running on the treadmill every day and I push myself fairly hard when I do so. In addition to that, I've begun to go for walks as well which are outside and usually at least 35/40 minutes. I'd estimate and say I get about 80 minutes of exercise a day.
As for the rest of my lifestyle, I walk around campus a lot at my school.

My pedometer says my daily steps are anywhere from 12,000 steps on my less active days, and 18-20,000 on my more active days. On the weekends, it's usually around 6,000 because I don't do much, but that's only 2 out of the 7 days in a week.

Would you consider this moderately active, active, extremely active, etc?

Thank you!

Christine_72

Your activity level should be based on your normal day to day activity before exercise.
Exercise is added separately.

For example, I sometimes walk up to 10 miles a day, as intentional exercise. I have my activity level set at sedentary on here.

ETA: The above explanation pertains to the MFP way which goes by NEAT. Meaning you will lose weight eating the calories it gives you with zero exercise.

If you follow the TDEE method, thrn your exercise is included in your calories, meaning you don't add them to your diary and eat them back.

Phew, I have used far too many words for should be a simple explanation. Hope I haven't confused you further.

In answer to your question, I would say lightly active if using tdee

momo_t90

I would say "active" for walking around campus. The treadmill and the walks outside I would not include in my activity level but rather log those daily in my diary.

Meganthedogmom

Maybe lightly active. Do you know about how many steps you get aside from the intentional exercise?
I get 10-12k steps a day on average, including intentional exercise, but I have my activity level set as sedentary since I have a desk job.

Unknown

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Christine_72

If you're going to set yourself to lightly or moderately active, then do not log any exercise here.
You could try it for a month and see how your weight loss goes. If you're losing at the rate you want then stick with it. If you gain or maintain then you need to do some tweaking. Basically trial and error.

momo_t90

Nope. It's not the same. Walking to school isn't intentional exercise. Getting on the treadmill and going to walks are. And there will be days when you won't be able to exercise for one reason or another, so it's best to not include them in your activity level.

PAV8888

The distinction between non exercise and exercise activity is fairly artificial from the point of view of what matters which is the total number of calories expended. It really is irrelevant WHY or HOW the calories got expended... just that they did.

A 12000 step day would fall somewhere between MFPs active and very active setting
A 20000 step day is above MFP's very active setting.
A 6000 step day would correspond to an MFP lightly active settings.

This assumes that you do NOT log any of the steps as additional exercise and that you log everything in one big bucket (aka TDEE method).

If your activities are mostly step based, a cheap Fitbit may help you deal with varying activity levels. Otherwise you can set yourself as active and monitor whether your weight change, over time, appears to bear that out.

concordancia

You are averaging about 10k, so go by that. I use lightly active, because the results suit me. After I weigh in April, I might adjust it higher, but my pants aren't falling off, do I doubt it.

Christine_72

I used to have mine set to lightly active, but because my "active day" ends at around 5pm, which is when I turn into sloth mode, I ended up losing a couple hundred calories every night.