Lightly Active vs. Active

pinkbilly009

I'm trying to lose about 20-30 lbs (post winter weight/medication change) and I'm unsure what level of activity I do. I am a dog walker. My business is small at the moment, with only three clients. I take them individually, so I walk, give or take 3 hours 5 days a week. Does that mean my job is lightly active or active? About two and a half years ago I worked a desk job 9-5 Mon-Fri; I reduced my calories to 1600 a day with 6 workouts a week. I lost a almost 30lbs but put it back on over 2016 due to a change in medication. 1600 calories now doesn't seem to be enough food... please help!

Evamutt

Hi, I used to be a dog walker too! no longer because I now have 6 dogs of my own, lol. I'm sure more experienced ppl here will give you good advice, but I put down lightly active, to err on side of being under. I take my dogs out every morning for hour + & usually again in evening. I don't log the mornings because it's part of my routine & I figure it's already accounted for in the lightly active so I log everything after that

pinkbilly009

If you don't mind me asking, how many dogs were you walking while being a dog walker? Did you walk multiples at a time?
Lightly Active makes sense. I only log my workouts "circuit training or yoga" because I do consider my clients work and not exercise.
6 dogs?! That must be amazing and challenging all at the same time

Theo166

I'd suggest getting a fitbit or something to better understand how much you do. In my mind i imagine it as leisurely walk with lots of clean-up breaks

Lightly Active with an easy loss goal will be about the same as Active with a steeper loss target, you have to play with what you are comfortable.

sijomial

1600 calories now doesn't seem to be enough food

An alternative view would be to manually set a goal at a calorie level you do think you can sustain.

jusjoking

pinkbilly009 wrote: »

I'm trying to lose about 20-30 lbs (post winter weight/medication change) and I'm unsure what level of activity I do. I am a dog walker. My business is small at the moment, with only three clients. I take them individually, so I walk, give or take 3 hours 5 days a week. Does that mean my job is lightly active or active? About two and a half years ago I worked a desk job 9-5 Mon-Fri; I reduced my calories to 1600 a day with 6 workouts a week. I lost a almost 30lbs but put it back on over 2016 due to a change in medication. 1600 calories now doesn't seem to be enough food... please help!

personally id go with "active." But as others may have already stated, in reality its neither here nor there. if you track calories and weight for a couple weeks then youll be able to see exactly what a certain calorie will do for you etc, then u can adjust

TheCupcakeCounter

If I were you I would put lightly active with a goal of 0.5-1lb/week and see what MFP spits out for calories. I started at 2 lbs/week which gave me 1200 calories a day which at 5'9" and 180+ lbs (at the time) was pretty low. I did eat back a decent chunk of my calories at the time but I was still stressing about what to eat to meet my nutrition goals and macros and stay satisfied. Can't remember what board I was on but another poster said that they set their MFP goal to 1 lbs/week from a calorie perspective and then tried to get 250-500 exercise calories/day to get closer to the 2lb goal. I changed my setup over to that and I have found it much easier so sustain and I rarely eat back my exercise calories since I am pretty happy with what I've had that day.

Theo also has a good idea about the FitBit or other step tracker - they can be helpful. I did notice that at the beginning my burns seemed really high but after a week or two it seemed to level out. Now it comes close to what MFP says I burned for the same activity (I randomly check certain activities). I only log exercises in MFP that the FitBit doesn't track well like yoga, Pilates, or swimming.

RedSquadronLeader

Hi, I think a better method is to tell MFP that you're sedentary, and your goal is to maintain your weight. Then it will give you a calorie target that will have you maintaining even if you sit around all day.

Then, you can log your exercise, perhaps underestimating it a bit because calorie burns are nearly always lower than what calculators will tell you (for instance if I walk 180 mins in a day, I'll usually log it as 100 if easy, 120 if hills, etc).

Then you can decide to eat 500 cals below that target each day for 1 lb/week loss, or eat a little more if you're hungrier that day, but you'll always be able to see your maintenance target. I find this motivating, instead of "crap, I went 300 cals over my goal today!" it turns into "great, I'm still 200 cals less than maintenance!"

Any of the things suggested by those above will work, just giving you a different take and you can see what suits your preference.

ETA: remember to log your weight and adjust your calorie goal after 10 lbs or so!