Sedentary, Lightly active or Active

auranya

I average 15k steps a day and am unsure what setting to put myself on. Sedentary, lightly active or active?

SusanMFindlay

Active. I get 15-25K steps per day and am set to "Active". I start getting positive adjustments (in other words, being credited with more calories burned than my activity level suggests) just over 10K steps (usually reaching 400-600 extra calories by the end of the day). My weight loss supports that this is a correct assessment.

Sedentary is only about 3-5K steps/day. Lightly active seems to cover 6-9K steps/day.

If you have your FitBit synced, it doesn't actually matter which activity level you pick as long as you have negative adjustments enabled. All that will change is how many steps you have to take before you start getting positive adjustments.

heybales

The other major difference is how much adjustment will change in the evening when you go from actually being active or lightly active to sitting on couch and sleeping and then being well under sedentary.

If you hit the couch at say 7 pm and go to bed by 11, you'll have 5 hrs until midnight of below Sedentary calorie burn.
Fitbit will actually give it BMR or sleeping level if no steps.

But MFP during that 5 hrs is still calculating a burn rate equal to 1.4 or 1.6 x BMR.
And the daily eating goal will show that assumption.

So if you meet your eating goal at say 7 pm and don't watch the numbers or see them until the next morning on first sync - you'll have a big adjustment down of your positive adjustment if you had one, or likely will have gone over calories.

The higher you set your activity level - the worse the effect.

Of course, no matter what level - it's always going to be the same amount of adjustment if you stop being active about the same time - so you just memorize that you'll need to miss goal by say 200 or 250 calories, to actually be right the next morning.

Or minimize the effect by selecting sedentary - but then you keep in mind about how many calories you get, and by supper you'll have a big adjustment up.

Depends on how much you plan your day - or go off of how active you've been so far.

SusanMFindlay

Interesting. I've never noticed that effect. I don't think I've ever seen MFP decrease my projected burn later in the day.

Is that because my routine involves a long walk after dinner and a fair amount of putzing around the kitchen and picking up toys after the kids go to bed? (And I don't usually get to bed until after 11pm so there's very little "doing nothing while sleeping" time before midnight.)

I'm set to "active", but I also get an additional 400-600 cals from FitBit most days. (1100 yesterday!) So, maybe that tends to "wash out" the effect?

Christine_72

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

Interesting. I've never noticed that effect. I don't think I've ever seen MFP decrease my projected burn later in the day.

Is that because my routine involves a long walk after dinner and a fair amount of putzing around the kitchen and picking up toys after the kids go to bed? (And I don't usually get to bed until after 11pm so there's very little "doing nothing while sleeping" time before midnight.)

I'm set to "active", but I also get an additional 400-600 cals from FitBit most days. (1100 yesterday!) So, maybe that tends to "wash out" the effect?

Yeah it used to happen to me every night when i was set at lightly active, even if i hit 20,000+ steps. I used to lose around 200 calories regularly.

Howeeever, i get the majority of those steps in by 4pm, after which the only movement i get is shuffling around inside making dinner and sitting watching tv, so pretty much sedentary. I'm also usually in bed by 7-7:30 every night. So I'm pretty active for 7-8 hours of the day, but very sedentary for the remaining hours.
So i switched back to sedentary, and even then i get up to 50 calories taken away by midnight everyday.