Are all office workers sedentary?
GuessIgottalog
Posts: 65 Member
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?
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?
2
Replies
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Unless your job involves a bunch of walking around, then it's sedentary.9
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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.31
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I'm in the office as well but a day at work still means at least 6000+ steps a day plus whatever exercise (walking, running or gym) I fit in outside of work. But if I'm having a lazy day at home I might only do 3000 so for MFP purposes I'm sedentary and top up my calories with the fitbit tracked burn9
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So I'm sedentary even though I work out?2
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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)3 -
GuessIgottalog wrote: »So I'm sedentary even though I work out?
Sedentary relates to lifestyle, not specific exercise. Log your workouts.15 -
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.3 -
GuessIgottalog wrote: »So I'm sedentary even though I work out?
Yes. MFP's calorie goal is based on your NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), which means your activity level represents how many calories you burn throughout day, excluding purposeful exercise. You're supposed to log your exercise separately. MFP will then give you extra calories on the days you workout.6 -
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 deficit1 -
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?
That would be sedentary.
Unless your job has you on your feet and walking around the office all day, you're sedentary.
Our ergonomic assessor described it this way ...
She asked me how active I was. I told her I exercised an hour a day!
"Oh," she said, "So you're inactive for 23 hours a day then".
That kind of put it into perspective.
These days I have an office job where I sit most of the time. But I walk before and after work, and at lunch, plus I do multiple flights of stairs each day ... and sometimes I cycle and lift weights too for a total of 90+ minutes a day. On the weekends, I cycle long distances .... hours.
But I'm sedentary.
And then I log my exercise separately as I do it. 5 -
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.0 -
I'm going to be a voice of dissent here... I have an office job. I also average 15K steps/day through purposeful exercise, walking on breaks at work, normal busy lifestyle, and an attempt to not sit down much other than when I am at my desk, in a car, eating a meal, or officially "done" for the day and watching 1 hour of TV usually before bed.
When I got a Fitbit I was set as sedentary on MFP and my adjustments would be rather large, at the time I was only averaging 10k/day. I got good advice on these boards that regardless of what kind of job you have, that kind of activity isn't sedentary. I changed to lightly active and my exercise adjustments went down, more in line with my purposeful attempts to exercise and not all the busy working mom movement I do during a 24 hour period.
I know by the set up process that MFP is focusing on your work related activity, but I think it's more accurate to consider the total activity over a time period when setting the goals. If you run a 10 K 5 times per week but do nothing else all day long, working at a desk, maybe sedentary is still appropriate and then log the workouts as such. But if you just have a high level of activity from busy work and a focus on sitting still less, then I think adjusting it upwards for the higher baseline calorie target, but logging actual exercise is fine.
Or just get an activity tracker and take most of the guesswork out of it...17 -
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!!
1 -
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
You seem hung up on the label. Don't be. It's just a way to characterize your lifestyle excluding purposeful exercise which, as others have said, you are to log separately. MFP estimates the calorie burn from your purposeful exercise and adds it to your available calories for the day. So yes, you need to do that to get an accurate idea of your true deficit.5 -
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.18 -
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.1 -
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).0 -
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.3
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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.5 -
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.4 -
And here's the thing ...
If you set yourself at sedentary and record your activity ... or if you set yourself at lightly active and don't record your activity ...
And then if you discover you're losing weight too fast, too slow, or not at all ... you can adjust the settings.
About every 3-4 weeks I shift my calories up or down by 25 or 50 cal.
The numbers aren't set in stone ... you've got to find something that works for you.5 -
It sounds like you're really bothered by the term sedentary. You could always use a TDEE calculator - get your calorie goal there and then change it in MFP and not log exercise calories. This is how mine is set up because I hate tracking exercise which is never accurate anyway and trying to reach a moving target.2
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I'm an office worker and I recently changed mfp settings from sedentary to active (1800-2240cals) and I have yet to have a negative adjustment from my fitbit. I am only sedentary if I don't go to work and I don't walk the dog. As soon as I've got to go to the office or take the dog out, I'm straight into lightly active or higher for the day, before any planned exercise.
And I'm losing in line with mfp/fitbit expectations so doesn't look like it's inflated2 -
I am often sedentary so I prefer to keep my activity level set to that and then log any walks over 5 min as exercise. It's working for me.
There is a grey area between things which are obviously exercise (eg half an hour on the elliptical) and things which are obviously daily activity (eg walking between the sofa and the toilet). When an activity is in that grey area, it's up to you which way you record it. The key thing is not to log it twice.0 -
I don't understand why someone would have a problem with sedentary. If you are trying to lose weight, there is no advantage to trying to argue against terminology. The truth will reveal itself on the scale eventually. I don't think the chances of success are very good here.8
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I have an office job so I put my activity level to 'sedentary', but looking at my results I am probably lightly active. By calculations I should lose very little weight eating 1600 a day, but when I do that, I lose a lot more.
Despite the office job, I am a very fast walker, and since I don't own a car, I walk everywhere.
I would just put it to sedentary - if you burn more than you think, better for you Go low rather than high. 0 -
I prefer the classification using non-purposeful steps as described by @SusanMFindlay. I think the variety of activity in office workers is clear based on the descriptions from previous posters. Some people drive or commute door-to-door and then sit down the for the majority of their 8-9 hours. Others use an active means of getting to and from work and have reasons, or make reasons, to up their steps and movement throughout the day. Clearly, that's going to make a big difference in your TDEE. At least, for me, it does and those calories do matter when you are quite active and require the fuel. Good luck x0
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SusanMFindlay wrote: »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.
You are a teacher? Then you don't fall into the first category.
I do use a pedometer - I don't really care about the MFP adjustments (I don't have mine set up to do that anyway - not an issue for me) andI don't care about TDEE. I was answering the OP. My plan works fine for me, and I agree with the "sedentary setting". Obviously you can find all sort of diferrent definitions of that online, I have done all that research - but we are talking about MFP here. You can do whatever works for you, and I will do what works for me. 0 -
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Alatariel75 wrote: »My job may be sedentary, but my lifestyle isn't.
This perfectly summarises my situation. I work 40-45hrs a week in an office which I would count as sedentary. However I average 15k steps a day, regularly exceeding 25k steps, and lift weights 4-5 times a week.6
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