Definitive Answers?? What Activity Level Am I?
SierraFatToSkinny
Posts: 463 Member
Using this week as an example, would I be considered sedentary, lightly active? Or what?
Edit: I'm usually sedentary and then have bursts of hyper activity when I go hiking or backpacking.
Edit: I'm usually sedentary and then have bursts of hyper activity when I go hiking or backpacking.
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Replies
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Following the definitions of MFP you set your activity level to what you are EVERYDAY and then you log all EXTRA activity as exercise. Given this definition you would be sedentary and log all of your hiking as exercise. A higher activity level would be if you had a job where you were on your feet walking around all day everyday or doing manual labour. Hope that helps!2
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Eh...
Let's say I'm backpacking and I'm burning 6k calories a day. Two days of that would require an intake of 16000 calories to both compensate for the burn and my BMR.
I'm not eating that much. Hell... I don't even have time to eat that much if I'm walking enough to burn 6k.
See my problem?
So would I really be sedentary?0 -
burn 6k? you went from 5000 steps to 6k burn. ure on both extremes0
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lemonychild wrote: »burn 6k? you went from 5000 steps to 6k burn. ure on both extremes
I was talking about backpacking.
The last time I went backpacking I took 46k steps and then 20k steps the next day. With a winter pack on my back.0 -
Go to My Home
Select Goals
Select View Guided Setup.
There you will see this:
How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesperson)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
That's how you decide.
Personally, I'd say you were sedentary. Then, when you do exercise, add it as exercise.4 -
Sedentary0
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Go to My Home
Select Goals
Select View Guided Setup.
There you will see this:
How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesperson)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
That's how you decide.
Personally, I'd say you were sedentary. Then, when you do exercise, add it as exercise.
Ah... that must be available on the computer. I have the app and it doesn't list all of that information.
I was looking at TDEE calculators and they have something like this:
I'm trying to decide what my maintenance is so I can figure out my deficit.
I'm sedentary 5 or so days a week and then extremely active a couple days.0 -
SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »Go to My Home
Select Goals
Select View Guided Setup.
There you will see this:
How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesperson)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
That's how you decide.
Personally, I'd say you were sedentary. Then, when you do exercise, add it as exercise.
Ah... that must be available on the computer. I have the app and it doesn't list all of that information.
I was looking at TDEE calculators and they have something like this:
I'm trying to decide what my maintenance is so I can figure out my deficit.
I'm sedentary 5 or so days a week and then extremely active a couple days.
Look at your average weekly activity, divide by 7, deduct your daily deficit for desired weight loss, track, check progress after a few weeks.
Adjust up or down as necessary.
Sorted.1 -
Dreamyriver wrote: »SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »Go to My Home
Select Goals
Select View Guided Setup.
There you will see this:
How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesperson)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
That's how you decide.
Personally, I'd say you were sedentary. Then, when you do exercise, add it as exercise.
Ah... that must be available on the computer. I have the app and it doesn't list all of that information.
I was looking at TDEE calculators and they have something like this:
I'm trying to decide what my maintenance is so I can figure out my deficit.
I'm sedentary 5 or so days a week and then extremely active a couple days.
Look at your average weekly activity, divide by 7, deduct your daily deficit for desired weight loss, track, check progress after a few weeks.
Adjust up or down as necessary.
Sorted.
Luckily those handy graphs I posted tells us.
I averaged just under 10,000 steps a day.
What activity level would you consider that to be?
Because that puts me on the high range of "Somewhat active" (according to the Internet when I googled activity levels of steps.)
But that seems sketchy....0 -
I'm sorry if I'm coming off as contradictory.
I've been frustrated trying to nail this down.0 -
SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »Dreamyriver wrote: »SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »Go to My Home
Select Goals
Select View Guided Setup.
There you will see this:
How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesperson)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
That's how you decide.
Personally, I'd say you were sedentary. Then, when you do exercise, add it as exercise.
Ah... that must be available on the computer. I have the app and it doesn't list all of that information.
I was looking at TDEE calculators and they have something like this:
I'm trying to decide what my maintenance is so I can figure out my deficit.
I'm sedentary 5 or so days a week and then extremely active a couple days.
Look at your average weekly activity, divide by 7, deduct your daily deficit for desired weight loss, track, check progress after a few weeks.
Adjust up or down as necessary.
Sorted.
Luckily those handy graphs I posted tells us.
I averaged just under 10,000 steps a day.
What activity level would you consider that to be?
Because that puts me on the high range of "Somewhat active" (according to the Internet when I googled activity levels of steps.)
But that seems sketchy....
Just under 10k steps would be somewhere in between lightly active and active. Pick one, see how your weight behaves, and adjust accordingly.2 -
The calculators are just giving you estimates anyway. So, another possible approach would be just to pick an activity setting (or a TDEE if you want to do it that way - but MFP assumes NEAT). Go with it for 2-4 weeks, and adjust depending on whether you're losing too fast, or not fast enough.
The experimental approach, using a calculator only as a starting guess (so no need to stress over it), will give you an accurate assessment tailored perfectly for you, not just an estimate based on the mean calorie requirements in some research study.
ETA: If your exercise load is irregular (as mine is), it can be helpful IMO to use a NEAT estimate for base calories - the way MFP does it - and separately eat back a reasonable estimate of intentional-exercise calories. Since you mention exercise calorie consumption that's impractical to eat back on the same day as the exercise, it's fine to spread them over several days, or look at your average daily calories over a week.2 -
I think you should bump yourself up to Lightly active at least, maybe even active but then on your more laid back days deduct some calories? I work as a server around 3 days a week (15 to 20 k steps a shift) but on my off days average 6 k steps. I have found that I lose a bit faster than predicted at the lightly active setting, I could probably bump myself up but since I'm in maintenance at the moment I prefer being a bit more lazy with logging.0
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SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »I'm sorry if I'm coming off as contradictory.
I've been frustrated trying to nail this down.
But it's all estimates... pick a calorie goal. Eat that goal (plus meaningful exercise cals if you're using mfp method) and after 4-6 weeks adjust as necessary depending what the scale does....1 -
SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »Go to My Home
Select Goals
Select View Guided Setup.
There you will see this:
How would you describe your normal daily activities?
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesperson)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
That's how you decide.
Personally, I'd say you were sedentary. Then, when you do exercise, add it as exercise.
Ah... that must be available on the computer. I have the app and it doesn't list all of that information.
...
I'm trying to decide what my maintenance is so I can figure out my deficit.
I'm sedentary 5 or so days a week and then extremely active a couple days.
Yes, on the computer.
To calculate maintenance, go to Goals > View Guided Setup and set yourself to lose 0 calories. That's maintenance.
And I'd say you're sedentary 7 days a week + add exercise separately on a couple days.
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Since you're a "weekend warrior," put yourself down as sedentary and then log the exercise separately.0
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It doesn't matter what you pick, really. I pick sedentary, but I always get 200+ calories from walking in a day. I prefer to set it to zero, hook up my fitness tracker, and let the calories climb when I need them.
As for backpacking, you do have to fuel on the day you need it for endurance events like that. Eating more before or after won't give you the on-the-spot energy you need to continue.
The conservative answer is everyone should pick sedentary and use a fitness tracker to adjust up as exercise is actually performed daily. I just use Google Fit, and it works for me.0 -
Sedentary, but log the backpacking on backpacking days.0
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