Is lightly active the right setting for me?

kristieshannon

I wear a Fitbit and average 8900 steps/day. I have 4 days a week that I hit at least 10,000 and the other 3 are less. Walking is my only exercise right now. Would you use the lightly active setting on MFP with this level of daily activity?

jeepinshawn

I'd leave it at sedentary.

JenMc14

I would also leave it as sedentary.

cwolfman13

IDK...I've never counted my steps, but I have a desk job and even without deliberate exercise I'm light active...but outside of the office, I'm on my feet quite a bit chasing my kids around, cooking, cleaning, doing yard work, fixing this or that, etc.

My opinion on these things is to pick one and go with it...be consistent and make changes as necessary because truth be told, these are just estimates...nobody needs exactly XXXX calories to maintain or XXXX calories to lose weight. Sometimes I think people treat these calculators like some kind of gospel. When I logged, my calorie targets always ended up being customized as per my actual results...but I was closer to light active than anything else from the defaults.

kristieshannon

My concern with dropping to sedentary is that MFP then gives me only 1230 cals/day. I've still got 90lbs to lose, that doesn't give me much wiggle room to drop cals as I get closer to goal.

RobD520

My bias would be lightly active. However, as I tracked progress over time, I would assess whether I was getting results as expected and respond accordingly.

smiles4jo

Those are about the same stats as me...I have mine set to Sedentary and then eat back some of the Fitbit adjustment, but not all of it.

I experimented a little and set it to Lightly Active and I just had a smaller Fitbit Adjusment.

In the end, as long as they're synced, I don't think it matters a whole lot as FitBit will adjust based on your actual activity level that day.

erinc5

As long as you're syncing with fitbit, then I'd leave it as sedentary. Fitbit is supposed to take the guesswork out. If Fitbit gives you calories, then you can eat some of them. I'd err on the side of caution and not eat them back if you don't think you were that active, but if you're getting 500+ calories from fitbit everyday, then there's nothing wrong with eating some of those back if everything is set up correctly.

kristieshannon

Thanks for your help everyone!

Meganthedogmom

Personally, I get a minimum of 10,000 each day and I keep my activity level set to sedentary since I have a desk job.