How many calories to count for steps

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Replies

  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    StaciMarie1974 wrote: »
    ANything is going to be a guess. I'd say the simplest thing to do, if you are set to sedentary but you are temporarily getting 15,000-20,000 steps: set to active and maintain. That should be a fairly safe ceiling to stay under.

    For what it's worth, "active" for me is about 12k steps as per fitbit, so maybe "very active" is more appropriate?

    Probably so, but I'm assuming the original poster might feel a bit panicky to increase activity level by 3 categories. Going up 2, and setting to maintain (instead of for weight loss) will increase calories greatly and poster can feel fairly confident they've not gone too far.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,139 Member
    edited June 2017
    12.5 k to 15.5k steps a day generally corresponds to MFP's VERY ACTIVE setting which uses an activity factor of 1.8

    If regularly doing 15-20k steps you would generally get extra calories over and above very active.

    Setting to "very active" and "to maintain" would result in a slight loss **if food intake is accurate**.

    You could also assume that a one hour moderately fast purposeful walk is approximately 6000 steps, so you can guestimate 15-20k steps a day as ~3 hours of met 3.3 activity during your day.

    This basically gives you 6 * BMR calories above MFP sedentary for those three hours.

    (( 3 * 3.3 = 9.9 MET hours simplified to 9.9 BMR calories. Deduct MFP's sedentary of 3.75 BMR calories during the same time period equals 6.15 x BMR calories above MFP sedentary))
  • jelleigh
    jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
    Wow thanks for all the responses !! For the suggestions around just not worrying and eat what I want - my issue tends to be that I easily go overboard. I've put on 15 lbs before on a vacation and even with water retention aside, that's a discouraging thing to see on the scale.

    Also thanks for all the calculations. I didn't realize that sedentary factored in like 5000 steps . I was counting all my steps as exercise so that's wrong! Good to know about minusing that activity off. I will try the suggestion about setting to lightly active and see what that gives me.

    Oh and I would totally eat cheese normally ! I've just been living in a couple try with horrible cheese for the last year and I know that I will be tending to over consume here and it's just so calorie dense it adds up quick!
  • inertiastrength
    inertiastrength Posts: 2,343 Member
    edited June 2017
    No clue, but I'm going to Punta Cana in a couple months and you wouldn't catch me dead on mfp asking about cheese while away. Enjoy your holiday and for god's sake get off the forums! lol
  • gamerbabe14
    gamerbabe14 Posts: 876 Member
    I've always heard: body weight in lbs x .3 x distance in miles
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    edited June 2017
    If all you need is a very rough estimate, subtract 3,000 from your step count then divide by 20* to get your "extra" calories over sedentary.

    "Sedentary" here corresponds to about 3,000 steps for most people. You don't switch up to "lightly active" until 5,000-7,000 steps - but there's an "in between space" where you're burning more calories than "sedentary" but not as many as "lightly active".

    Past that, an average person gets about 2,000 steps per mile and burns about 100 calories/mile.

    So... If you get 17,000 steps on a particular day, subtract 3,000 to get 14,000 "extra steps". Divide by 2,000 to get 7 miles. Multiply by 100 to get 700 extra calories.**

    Yes, it's rough math but it's easy to do in your head and if it's just for vacation, it'll be close enough. The hillier and/or faster your walks are, the more calories you'll burn, but don't worry about that part.

    *Dividing by 20 is the same as dividing by 2,000 then multiplying by 100.

    **Checking my FitBit numbers, I actually get about 800 calories above sedentary for 17,000 steps, and I weigh 150 pounds. So, not bad for a very crude estimate.
  • nosebag1212
    nosebag1212 Posts: 621 Member
    gamerbabe14 wrote: »
    I've always heard: body weight in lbs x .3 x distance in miles

    That sounds way off
  • DamieBird
    DamieBird Posts: 651 Member
    edited June 2017
    fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »
    Meelisv wrote: »
    MommyMeggo wrote: »
    TavistockToad wrote: »
    wehn i am on holiday I eat ALL the food, do lots of walking, enjoy myself, and get back on plan when i am back.

    oh and i also give it a week before i weigh myself!

    THIS!

    THIS x2

    Also, 10k steps vs. 20k steps doesn't make that big of a difference calorie wise, perhaps 200-300 calories max. Odds are that you eat more than that with all the cheese and wine on vacation anyway.

    Nonsense. General rule-of-thumb is 100 cal/mile. **Note that is general.

    10k extra steps would be closer to 400-600, unless you take REALLY small steps? 2k steps is roughly = 1 mile

    Edit to clarify that I was responding to the "10k vs 20k isn't that big of a difference." I agree with the point you're making, @fitmom4lifemfp
  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    Meelisv wrote: »
    MommyMeggo wrote: »
    TavistockToad wrote: »
    wehn i am on holiday I eat ALL the food, do lots of walking, enjoy myself, and get back on plan when i am back.

    oh and i also give it a week before i weigh myself!

    THIS!

    THIS x2

    Also, 10k steps vs. 20k steps doesn't make that big of a difference calorie wise, perhaps 200-300 calories max. Odds are that you eat more than that with all the cheese and wine on vacation anyway.

    My calories burned from steps is really consistent. About 70 per 1000 steps at work (hills, stairs, fast pace running to meetings and carrying about 20 pounds of stuff for meetings). About 50 per 1000 steps at home (slower pace, usually watching TV while walking around my apt. Complex, totally flat, not carrying anything but my phone). Numbers work for me! I'm 46, 5'3 and 117-ish.

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