Unsure what to set my activity level at...

halimaiqbal00

I workout 5x a week for an hour each time. 3 days of lifting and 2 of steady state cardio mixed with hiit. Aside from this, I do general day to day duties as a sahm so cooking, cleaning etc.

I'm looking to lose 10 pounds of fat at a rate of 0.5-1 pound a week. I'm not overweight, more skinny fat

MiniMansell1964

your mfp activity level does not inc any excersise. that is on top of your daily activity.
on an average day do you have a sedentary job? or a physical one?

queenliz99

It's all guess work. Pick something and watch the scale. If you are losing or not losing at all adjust the activity setting.

lorrpb

Set activity at sedentary, then add on your exercise. Eat back about 1/2 your exercise calories. Set loss goal at .5 per week. You should be good.

peaceout_aly

halimaiqbal00 wrote: »

I workout 5x a week for an hour each time. 3 days of lifting and 2 of steady state cardio mixed with hiit. Aside from this, I do general day to day duties as a sahm so cooking, cleaning etc.

I'm looking to lose 10 pounds of fat at a rate of 0.5-1 pound a week. I'm not overweight, more skinny fat

To be safe, set your activity to sedentary. Lightly active is more for the people who have jobs where they are walking, or up on their feet often, and active is for those lifting a lot - like warehouse workers. Add in your exercise daily using the cardio option - there is a cardio input for weight lifting as well.

Dnarules

lorrpb wrote: »

Set activity at sedentary, then add on your exercise. Eat back about 1/2 your exercise calories. Set loss goal at .5 per week. You should be good.

I agree this is a good place to start. If after a few weeks you are losing weight too quickly, you can adjust accordingly (either go to lightly active or eat back a few more exercise calories).

thunder1982

SAHM would likely be lightly active to active. I would start with lightly active. When my kids were little I easily hit 20k steps a day when I was at home, now they are older its not so high, probably around 10k per day. Either way its not sedentary.

Meghanebk

I'd set it to Sedentary and log all your exercise. Don't forget you can eat back the exercise calories you earn, though many people eat back only half since MFP tends to overestimate some calorie burns from exercise. It depends how much actual running around you do for the kids. Are you literally on your feet moving most waking minutes?

If you lose more than 0.5-1 pound or so per week, reset your activity level to Lightly Active. Most SAHM's I've seen on the boards are no more active than Lightly. (Unless they take the kids strollers out for 10K runs. There's an amazing woman in my neighborhood who I swear clocks more miles with a jogging stroller than I do with my car)

MFP's example of Active includes waitress. Most waitstaff I know get in half-marathon levels of walking every day, most SAHM's I know don't.

savithny

Lightly active, in the studies that they use to set up those categories, is usually more than 6,000 steps a day. Active means on your feet pretty much all day, not sitting down, and really moving around. Very few SAHMs I know are *active* without purposeful additional exercise.

(Not a dig at SAHM; just a comment on the general sedentary nature of modern daily life and how we've set it up).

Asher_Ethan

When I started MFP as a SAHM my activity level was set to lightly active and it was perfect. I always log my activity as half of what I really did since MFP calorie burns are exceptionally high.

Sued0nim

halimaiqbal00 wrote: »

I workout 5x a week for an hour each time. 3 days of lifting and 2 of steady state cardio mixed with hiit. Aside from this, I do general day to day duties as a sahm so cooking, cleaning etc.

I'm looking to lose 10 pounds of fat at a rate of 0.5-1 pound a week. I'm not overweight, more skinny fat

SAHM is generally sedentary to lightly active

Exercise is not activity level but logged on top

SusanMFindlay

How old are your kids? How much time do they keep you on your feet? How much time are you on your eet doing chores? Very few stay at home moms are sedentary by MFP's definition (which is really really sedentary - equivalent to about 3,000 steps/day). Lacking any other information, I'd start at lightly active. (That's what I did, though I found it to be a massive underestimate for me.)

One easy way to estimate activity level is to get a pedometer to track your steps for a week or so (or use a step tracking app on your phone like Google Fit - which is free). Then use the number as an estimate of your activity level.

If you're below 5,000 steps/day, pick sedentary.
Between 5,000 and 10,000, pick lightly active.
Over 10,000, pick active.
Over 15,000, consider picking very active.

Those are all pretty conservative estimates, but they give you a starting point. After a month or two of logging all your food and weighing yourself, you can see if you're losing weight at the rate you expect (or faster or slower) and adjust accordingly. The activity level estimates assume that your calorie intake is being measured accurately - but watching the scale will let you compensate for any systematic errors there too.

wndlady

SAHM here and set myself at lightly active. I walk many steps each day from room to room, up and down the stairs to check the fire, outside to dump the trash and compost and check the mail, to and from the car and stores doing errands, chasing after the puppy and small children, on my feet doing laundry/cleaning/food prep. If you are a sahm with only teens and perhaps and work at home computer job then sedentary might make more sense.