What to log for sedentary exercise

gabrielleelliott90

What types of exercise should I log when set as sedentary, should I eat the calories back ?

LazSommer

exercise?

gabrielleelliott90

LazSommer wrote: »

exercise?

Yeah but what types ie walking everywhere or what?

alyssagb1

Any intentional exercise, you should log. Example: 1 hour of running at x speed, or 30 minutes of aerobics/swimming etc. I wouldn't bother logging anything less than 10 minutes.
Eat back a portion of the exercise calories (usually most on MFP will suggest ~50%), and see how your loss is over a period of time (a few weeks should be good) and adjust the amount of exercise calories consumed if needed.

kathrynjean_

gabrielleelliott90 wrote: »

LazSommer wrote: »

exercise?

Yeah but what types ie walking everywhere or what?

As the previous poster said, any sort of intentional exercise. If you walk a fair bit getting to work or running errands, I wouldn't log this as exercise but instead up your activity level to "lightly active". I think many people have the perception that they are sedentary, but really the amount of activity for that level is SO low, most people are not in fact sedentary.

gmallan

Set your activity level appropriately so you don't need to log everything, only intentional exercise. If there is a huge variation in your activity level you might need to eat a couple hundred calories less or more on active/sedentary days to account for that.

Christine_72

gabrielleelliott90 wrote: »

LazSommer wrote: »

exercise?

Yeah but what types ie walking everywhere or what?

The only exercise i do is walking. I have a fitbit which syncs it all to mfp. I'm very sedentary outside of exercise, anything over 3000ish steps is purposeful exercise for me. I aim for 20,000 steps a day.

sijomial

The calorie goal you arrived at on here includes activity as part of your everyday lifestyle and job (hence activity setting) but doesn't include intentional exercise.

So walking for regular activity should be part of how you arrived at your sedentary setting - did you set that appropriately? You are saying you spend the most of your time sitting down. Only you know if that's true.

(Many people choose the fastest rate of weight loss, pick the lowest activity setting and then refuse to add exercise calories and then struggle to adhere to a tiny calorie allowance!)

Walking for the purpose of exercise should be logged as it's not already accounted for.
This formula will give you a pretty reasonable estimate:
Net Walking calories Spent = (Body weight in pounds) x (0.30) x (Distance in miles)