Which activity level ?

OneTwentyThree

When using the scooby tdee calculator.. Can someone explain the difference between 3-5 days of moderate exercise vs 5-6 of strenous exercise ? How many calories burned per day would each one be ?

For example i am mostly very sedentary except I go to the gym for 1.5 hours 7 days a week. I dont know if my exercise is considered strenous or moderate. Which one should I chose if I am burning 500 cals each day , and which one if its 800 cals each day.

Thanks for help

beastmode_kitty

Depends on what you are doing. If you are doing heavy intense lifting with cardio and then you can put strenuous. If not, then put moderate.

OneTwentyThree

I dont do intense lifting right now. Just classes with dumb bells, body bar, and cardio. Some days Im also on elliptical. So in that case I should do moderate ?

Its just confusing because the only choice is 3-5 moderate or 5-6 strenuous. But im doing 7 days.. Do I still pick 3-5 moderate in my case?

heybales

And this is why the rough 5 level TDEE charts start to fail - besides the fact they don't even include increased daily activity in them beyond sedentary.

If you have decent workouts, 1 hr walking is not the same as 1 hr running as 1 hr lifting, and if your week has lots of exercise, your ability to guess right and be in the middle of a level can get very hard.

On my profile page - spreadsheet called Just TDEE and Deficit Please.

If you gave Google account, you have Drive and access to Sheets, and can track your progress too - and much better estimate of TDEE.
Just make a copy to your own Drive space.