Are all office workers sedentary?

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GuessIgottalog
GuessIgottalog Posts: 65 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Are you sedentary if you work in an office 5 days a week?
Walk during all lunch breaks.
Lift weights 2 to 3 times a week.
Do cardio sessions 1 to 2 times a week. (Skiing, skating, elipitical) for 30min sessions.

Does that mean I'm lightly active?
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  • GuessIgottalog
    GuessIgottalog Posts: 65 Member
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    So I'm sedentary even though I work out?
  • fitmom4lifemfp
    fitmom4lifemfp Posts: 1,575 Member
    edited March 2017
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    GuessIgottalog wrote: »
    Are you sedentary if you work in an office 5 days a week?
    Walk during all lunch breaks.
    Lift weights 2 to 3 times a week.
    Do cardio sessions 1 to 2 times a week. (Skiing, skating, elipitical) for 30min sessions.

    Does that mean I'm lightly active?

    I do cardio every day at lunch, work out 3-4 nights a week, lift weights, bike, kayak, always get at least 10k steps a day...but I work in an office on my butt for 8-9 hours every day. And get 7-8 hours sleep each night. So yes, according to the MFP guidelines, I am sedentary.

    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)
  • fitmom4lifemfp
    fitmom4lifemfp Posts: 1,575 Member
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    GuessIgottalog wrote: »
    So I'm sedentary even though I work out?

    Yes, in the context of your MFP profile setting. It relates to how much you move all day. If you are on your feet all day long, it makes a huge difference in your calorie burn, vs. sitting all day.
  • GuessIgottalog
    GuessIgottalog Posts: 65 Member
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    Hmm so if I ran 2 evening marathons a week and play 2 games of hockey and a Sunday round of golf but because I sit in an office Monday to Friday, I would be considered sedentary?
    So you really do need to log exercise in MFP as well if you want to see how you are losing from accurate deficit
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
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    GuessIgottalog wrote: »
    Hmm so if I ran 2 evening marathons a week and play 2 games of hockey and a Sunday round of golf but because I sit in an office Monday to Friday, I would be considered sedentary?
    So you really do need to log exercise in MFP as well if you want to see how you are losing from accurate deficit

    That's how it is set up, yes.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 24,839 Member
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    GuessIgottalog wrote: »
    Hmm so if I ran 2 evening marathons a week and play 2 games of hockey and a Sunday round of golf but because I sit in an office Monday to Friday, I would be considered sedentary?
    So you really do need to log exercise in MFP as well if you want to see how you are losing from accurate deficit

    Yes.

    I cycle centuries (100 miles) ... and I'm sedentary.

    But you'd better believe, I do log those centuries!!

  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
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    SusanMFindlay wrote: »
    fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »
    GuessIgottalog wrote: »
    Are you sedentary if you work in an office 5 days a week?
    Walk during all lunch breaks.
    Lift weights 2 to 3 times a week.
    Do cardio sessions 1 to 2 times a week. (Skiing, skating, elipitical) for 30min sessions.

    Does that mean I'm lightly active?

    I do cardio every day at lunch, work out 3-4 nights a week, lift weights, bike, kayak, always get at least 10k steps a day...but I work in an office on my butt for 8-9 hours every day. And get 7-8 hours sleep each night. So yes, according to the MFP guidelines, I am sedentary.

    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 is indeed how MFP describes the various activity levels, but I found the calorie burn that was assigned to the description that best fits my job to be wildly inaccurate for me. I am actually a "very active" teacher. When MFP calculates calorie burn, it uses the following formulas:
    Sedentary: BMR x 1.25
    Lightly Active: BMR x 1.4
    Active: BMR x 1.6
    Very Active: BMR x 1.8

    So, if you want accurate calorie recommendations, you pick the setting that is closest to your actual calorie burn - regardless of how your job would be described. Best bet is to get a step count from a pedometer:

    Sedentary: <5000 steps/day
    Lightly Active: 5000-9999 steps/day
    Active: 10,000-14,999 steps/day
    Very Active: more than 15,000 steps/day
    adapted from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14715035 (which has one extra activity level relative to MFP)

    Of course, if you're including walks in your activity level, you don't also log them as exercise as that would be double dipping.

    If you really don't like logging exercise, you can also take a TDEE approach (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) where you calculate your average daily calorie burn using a site such as http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/, pick a calorie goal and log no exercise at all.

    Think of it this way: You're at work 8 hours/day. If you sleep 8 hours/day, you still have another 8 hours/day to do stuff and live life. If your "doing stuff and living life" is mostly active, you can be active for as many hours as you are sedentary on work days. You might also be active for well over half the day on weekends. That does NOT average out to being sedentary. You know your lifestyle better than anyone else on this site and are therefore better equipped to decide that any of the rest of us. But human nature makes us prone to overestimating activity - so a pedometer or fitness tracker is a handy tool to keep you honest.

    Great post.
  • 30kgin2017
    30kgin2017 Posts: 228 Member
    edited March 2017
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    I have a full time office job, but I also have 3 young kids. While I am at work my steps are inline with a sedentary person but outside of the office hours I have 3 (actually 4) people I have to run around after. I easily do 2k steps before I get to work @7:30 and we have an upstairs/downstairs house so plenty of steps gained while doing ordinary household things. I average around 7.5k steps on a normal weekday without any exercise. I often dont get to sit down till 9pm so I am actually active for around 5 hours a day. 1.5hrs before work and 3.5 hours afterwards.

    I upped my level to lightly active and my fitbit adj are min on an average day (up or down).
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    edited March 2017
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    It's also worth noting that there are different contexts in which activity level is relevant. For circulation issues, for example, it matters how often you are active - so those with desk jobs will be recommended to get up and move around for a few minutes every hour. For weight loss, it doesn't matter as much whether the activity is spread out or grouped together - so some people can have a desk job but still be classified as "lightly active", "active" or even "very active" based on what they do in their non-working hours. The key is simply not to "double dip" by logging your general activities as exercise.
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
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    Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »
    Alatariel75 wrote: »
    I'm an office worker who hits 10k steps every day without additional deliberate exercise. My job may be sedentary, but my lifestyle isn't.

    This is kinda me. I teach in a university. My classroom is about....40 steps from my office. My staff's office is about....30 steps from my office. The cafeteria is about...200 steps from my office.

    I average about 13k-15k a day.

    I either:
    get up and run
    or
    get up and walk
    and/or
    walk to work
    and/or
    bike to work
    and/or walk at noon
    and/or
    walk or run after work....

    on weekends we typically at a 10-12k step walk with the dogs on saturday
    Sunday can be anywhere from 5-25k steps.
    (or Saturday mixed, Sunday major walk)

    And then I do
    Pilates 2x a week
    Power yoga 2-3 times a week
    Sometimes a yin or restorative class as well

    been doing this for 10-15 years or so...wouldn't say I was sedentary.

    I don't really know what MFP says. I go by what my fitbit says.

    I also go by FitBit because there isn't a setting on here or any TDEE calculator that makes sense for me.

    That said, lucky you having everything so close! I also teach at a university. My office is 1.5 km from my parking spot. My classrooms range from 200 m to 1 km from my office. The cafeteria is 1 km from my office. The gym is 1 km from my office. When I get my "go get 250 steps this hour" message from my FitBit, I walk down the hall and back; the hall is at least 500 m long. If I haven't hit 10,000 steps by the time I get home from work, it will have been a very very strange day.

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