Are all office workers sedentary?

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Replies

  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,488 Member
    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.
  • kpkitten
    kpkitten Posts: 164 Member
    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 inflated
  • CattOfTheGarage
    CattOfTheGarage Posts: 2,750 Member
    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.
  • HM2206
    HM2206 Posts: 174 Member
    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.
  • danika2point0
    danika2point0 Posts: 197 Member
    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 x
  • fitmom4lifemfp
    fitmom4lifemfp Posts: 1,575 Member
    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. :)
  • fitmom4lifemfp
    fitmom4lifemfp Posts: 1,575 Member
    edited March 2017
    .
  • newheavensearth
    newheavensearth Posts: 870 Member
    I'm glad I found this. I need to help someone set up his account. He is a forklift operator, drives forklift and offloads cargo, 6 to 8 hrs per day, 5 days per week overnight shift . Remaining time sleeps during the day, including weekends. Some incidental walking, maybe half hour per day. What would be his activity level?

    Thanks.
  • fitmom4lifemfp
    fitmom4lifemfp Posts: 1,575 Member
    newheavensearth wrote: »
    I'm glad I found this. I need to help someone set up his account. He is a forklift operator, drives forklift and offloads cargo, 6 to 8 hrs per day, 5 days per week overnight shift . Remaining time sleeps during the day, including weekends. Some incidental walking, maybe half hour per day. What would be his activity level?

    Thanks.
    This is on the MFP site.
    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)

    I would say that he is Very Active.
  • newheavensearth
    newheavensearth Posts: 870 Member
    fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »
    newheavensearth wrote: »
    I'm glad I found this. I need to help someone set up his account. He is a forklift operator, drives forklift and offloads cargo, 6 to 8 hrs per day, 5 days per week overnight shift . Remaining time sleeps during the day, including weekends. Some incidental walking, maybe half hour per day. What would be his activity level?

    Thanks.
    This is on the MFP site.
    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)

    I would say that he is Very Active.

    He would too. But its only 6 to 8 hrs . And pretty much the rest of the day he's sleeping so there's the issue.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,876 Member
    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 think where you're confused is that with MFP, your activity level doesn't include deliberate exercise, which is why there is zip, zero, nada mention of exercise in the descriptor...just your "normal" daily. Exercise is logged after the fact and you get calories to "eat back". If you want to include exercise in your activity level, I'd suggest using a TDEE calculator and manually adjusting your targets here.
  • GuessIgottalog
    GuessIgottalog Posts: 65 Member
    cwolfman13 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 think where you're confused is that with MFP, your activity level doesn't include deliberate exercise, which is why there is zip, zero, nada mention of exercise in the descriptor...just your "normal" daily. Exercise is logged after the fact and you get calories to "eat back". If you want to include exercise in your activity level, I'd suggest using a TDEE calculator and manually adjusting your targets here.

    At sedentary with my height and weight, my tree is 1700. I'm 5.9 and 155lbs.
    I'm trying to eat 1250 cals per day but going over some days so prob averaging 1500 a day. 1700 equals about 11900 and I'm only at 10300. Not much of a deficit at all. But I do exercise...
  • dalem12
    dalem12 Posts: 13 Member
    I work in an office. But I walk 5-7 miles every day. So I don't consider myself sedentary.
  • fitmom4lifemfp
    fitmom4lifemfp Posts: 1,575 Member
    edited March 2017
    newheavensearth wrote: »
    fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »
    newheavensearth wrote: »
    I'm glad I found this. I need to help someone set up his account. He is a forklift operator, drives forklift and offloads cargo, 6 to 8 hrs per day, 5 days per week overnight shift . Remaining time sleeps during the day, including weekends. Some incidental walking, maybe half hour per day. What would be his activity level?

    Thanks.
    This is on the MFP site.
    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)

    I would say that he is Very Active.

    He would too. But its only 6 to 8 hrs . And pretty much the rest of the day he's sleeping so there's the issue.

    8 hours a day of very active, is considered very active, for the purposes of MFP. That is what you are asking, right?
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    mcraw75 wrote: »
    fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »
    newheavensearth wrote: »
    I'm glad I found this. I need to help someone set up his account. He is a forklift operator, drives forklift and offloads cargo, 6 to 8 hrs per day, 5 days per week overnight shift . Remaining time sleeps during the day, including weekends. Some incidental walking, maybe half hour per day. What would be his activity level?

    Thanks.
    This is on the MFP site.
    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)

    I would say that he is Very Active.

    Forklift operators sit all day, similar to truck drivers. His activity level would be sedentary.

    Not if they're also doing all the loading and unloading.
  • mcraw75
    mcraw75 Posts: 99 Member
    SusanMFindlay wrote: »
    mcraw75 wrote: »
    fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »
    newheavensearth wrote: »
    I'm glad I found this. I need to help someone set up his account. He is a forklift operator, drives forklift and offloads cargo, 6 to 8 hrs per day, 5 days per week overnight shift . Remaining time sleeps during the day, including weekends. Some incidental walking, maybe half hour per day. What would be his activity level?

    Thanks.
    This is on the MFP site.
    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)

    I would say that he is Very Active.

    Forklift operators sit all day, similar to truck drivers. His activity level would be sedentary.

    Not if they're also doing all the loading and unloading.

    They load and unload with the forklift don't they? I work at a plant that uses forklifts, none of the operators get off the truck and actually lift anything by hand. Needless to say, most of them are overweight.

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