Best activity level setting for a domestic cleaner?

AussiePeach

I'm a domestic cleaner who works about 10-15 hours a week, cleaning bathrooms and kitchens, vacuuming, mopping, etc. The rest of the time I'm a uni student, so often sitting still studying and typing.

At the moment I have my activity level set at sedentary, and I'm logging half my actual cleaning hours as exercise (eg I worked 4 hours today, so I logged just 2 hours of moderate effort cleaning as exercise).

Does this seem like the best solution?

RoxieDawn

You can do it really any way you want to.. however this is not really considered exercise. This part of your lifestyle in which you are ordinarily on your feet being lightly active or active most of day.

Exercise is considered steady state heart rate increasing activity i.e. cardio/running/biking/swimming. So to get the calories you need to include your work lifestyle, change your level to lightly active or active. This will give you some more calories to eat in order to stay in energy balance to perform your total daily caloric needs. And then add in steady state exercise (cardio, etc.) if you do or will do any in the future.

marm1962

I am a full time self employed House Cleaner (27 - 37 hours per week) and I also have my lifestyle set at sedentary. but I also have a fitbit flex to help me determine how many calories I am burning as it is a difficult profession to gauge accurately. Dusting takes hardly any calories at all, but sweeping, mopping, vacuuming (especially large houses) can be a real calorie burner. Be careful of the calorie burn for house cleaning on mfp, it is wayyyy high. From the time I get up to the time I get home my fitbit will tell me I've burned only 348 or up to 1500 calories, it all depends on how many houses and what I have to do in them that day.

RoxieDawn

OP, keep in mind that an activity tracker like Fitbit flex is step based. I will give you a very wide approximation of calorie burn for cleaning but it is a little better than using the MFP exercise entry. So if you do decide to not up your activity level and want to keep adding domestic cleaning as exercise, only eat back a portion of this.

You work actvittoes are in the NEAT (activity level) and not EAT. Keep this in mind so that you set up the activity correctly for the right energy balance you need. MFP used NEAT and expects you to setup the right acitvity level and eat back some exercise calories.

TDEE, or total daily energy expenditure, is the combination of your BMR, NEAT, EAT and TEF. It is the complete amount of calories you burn on any given day.

TDEE = BMR + NEAT + EAT + TEF

NEAT - NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis (sometimes referred to as non-exercise associated thermogenesis), is the amount of calories you expend on a daily basis from non-planned movement or exercise. Non-activity calorie expenditure could include walking during work, talking, going to the store or doing household chores. Again, NEAT does NOT include planned gym cardio, conditioning and weight training sessions.

You typically have control over the incidental expended calories that are excluded in NEAT. You can choose to not go to the store, or to not clean your house, etc.

EAT - EAT, or exercise associated thermogenesis, refers to daily expended calories that come from planned exercise sessions. So for EAT, incidental exercise, such as going to the store or walking during work, is not included. Only your cardio, resistance training, Zumba, p90x, etc. sessions are totaled.

TEF - TEF, or thermal effect of feeding, is the amount of energy burned directly related to food intake and digestion. TEF will vary based on a meal's fiber and macronutrient composition.

AussiePeach

Yeah, I only log and eat back half of what mfp says I burn. But I'll consider changing my activity level up instead. Thanks