Lightly Active or Active?

ScaredCurly92

Hi, everyone! I've used MFP on and off for a long time now, and I've always set my activity level to Lightly Active. This was accurate in college when I sat in a desk all day at school and worked part-time fashion retail at night before heading home. But now I work inventory, and I'm on my feet 6-8 hours per day lifting heavy boxes and pushing heavy carts full of items. And despite trying to lose weight, I find that I'm still hungry on 1600 calories a day, and consequently am going over more than I should. Should my activity level be Active instead of Lightly Active to increase my goal, or do I just need to try harder to maintain 1600 cals a day?

Orphia

https://www.verywell.com/how-many-pedometer-steps-per-day-are-enough-3432827

1. Sedentary Lifestyle Index: Under 5000 steps per day is an indicator of being inactive and sitting too much, which raises health risks.

2. Low Active: 5,000-7,499 steps/day is typical of daily activity excluding sports/exercise and might be considered low active. The average American walks 5,900 to 6,900 steps per day, putting the majority in the low active category.

3. Somewhat Active: 7,500-9,999 steps/day likely includes some exercise or walking (and/or a job that requires more walking) and might be considered somewhat active.

4. Active: 10,000 steps/day indicates the point that should be used to classify individuals as active. This makes it a good daily goal for healthy people who want a quick indicator they are getting in their daily exercise.

5. Highly Active: Individuals who take more than 12,500 steps/day are likely to be classified as highly active.

lorrpb

You can either up your activity level or decrease your weekly goal by .5, like 1.5 instead of 2, or whatever it is.

Asher_Ethan

Keep it at lightly active but switch your settings to lose .5 pounds a week. After 6 weeks- if you lose 6 pounds, then you should be active. If you lose 3 pounds, you're where you need to be.

SusanMFindlay

Go to active. Or even very active.

Orphia's post is exactly right. My job isn't anywhere near as active as yours, but I average just under 20K steps per day. I am set to "active". My FitBit usually gives me 400-600 extra calories *on top of that*, and I lose weight as expected so that calorie burn is correct. I eat 2200-2300 cals/day and lose 1 pound/week. (I was losing 2+ pounds/week when I was eating 1700 cals/day so I increased my intake.)

Also, if your weightloss goal is set to more than 1 pound/week, lower it.

In my opinion, the activity levels at MFP are really really conservative. Which is, admittedly, fine for people with desk jobs who don't get a lot of NEAT (non-exercise activity). But it means that people who have active jobs are not just "lightly active".