What's your activity level and what do you do?

oreo_cookies_1992

So I'm admittedly having a hard time figuring out which activity level option I should use.

I work a desk job 3 days a week. However, almost everyday I get at least 2-4 hours of walking in between : house work, chasing a toddler and I also put aside time almost everyday for at least 1.5 hours of walking.

When I first joined the app I had it set to lightly active. Then I wondered if I should change it to sedentary.

Note; I have my Fitbit linked with MFP. I usually eat about 20-40% of my exercise calories back but I'm wondering if I should at all, based on my chosen activity level... Ugh I don't know what to chose! (I don't want to be over eating and I especially don't want to be under eating!)

Machka9

Go to the MyHome link.
Then Goals.
Then View Guided Setup.

Read what MFP suggests for Activity Level:

How would you describe your normal daily activities?
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 have a desk job, therefore I am sedentary.

However, I exercise a lot ... so I log that in the Exercise area.

LynnJ9

I am a teacher so I should set mine to active, but on the weekends I am sometimes a lazy log and there are days when I am in meetings all day sitting. I also sell real estste and if I am doing thst I am very active. So I set mine to sedentary and just let my fitbit give me extra calories for my steps.

Lillymoo01

If I were you and had a Fitbit synced to MFP I'd put my activity level at sedentary and eat back at least half, if not 3/4 of the calories it gave me back.

In reality, if you are walking that much every day you would actually be active or more likely very active as you would average more than 15,000 steps a day as a guess.

Over a month you will be able to work out how accurate you are with your exercise burn (assuming you are logging food intake correctly) by how your weight loss is going in relation to your goal.

amandacalories

I agree with the above. I have a desk job during the day and a restaurant job during the night so I wasn't sure either. I set my level to sedentary and let my Fitbit do the work. I eat 500 below my sedentary calories and if the Fitbit adds more I eat more if necessary.

Nony_Mouse

I also just have my activity level set to sedentary and let my Fitbit do the work. I eat all the calories it gives me (accounting for deficit), because experience has shown that my Fitbit does a pretty darn good job of estimating my TDEE (total daily energy expenditure).

Orphia

Link your Fitbit to MFP.

Set your activity level to Sedentary, enable Negative Calorie Adjustments, and let Fitbit add the extra exercise calories.

You can probably eat back nearly all of those.

I did, and do with my Garmin, and have lost 80 lbs and kept it off for 18 months.

malibu927

With Fitbit (and the negative adjustment enabled) it doesn't matter. I set mine to lightly active because I like to start off with more calories.

tinkerbellang83

I have my Garmin synced with MFP and like @malibu927 I have mine set to Lightly Active because even on most lazy days I still get around 6-8000 steps in. Seems to be working for me, I rarely if ever get a negative adjsutment.

GrumpyHeadmistress

I’m sedentary and then add my exercise calories.

KANGOOJUMPS

I have fitbit charge 2, I do 2 to 3 hours cardio a day, I walk, bike, roller blade, kangoojumps, paddle board, skate, snowshoe, ski, run, stairs, oh, on and on and on, always try to do something new and fun each and every single day!

janejellyroll

I set mine to sedentary and let my Fitbit handle the adjustments.

kristen8000

Sedentary. Desk job 5 days a week (but on the weekend I rarely sit down). I use exercise as a bonus to eat more. I'd rather have a lower goal and be safer than think my BMR is higher than it is.

savithny

When you say you eat your "exercise calories" back - what do you mean? Are you counting your walking and housework?

If you are counting your walking as exercise, then you cannot count it as your lifestyle.

Look at how many steps you get in a day. How many of them are from activities that you are logging as exercise? Subtract them from your total. If your total steps after you subtract counted activities is less than 6,000, you should probably use "sedentary."

If you use your walking around to decide you are "lightly active" and you count them as exercise, you're double-counting.

katnadreau

I have my Fitbit synced, and my activity level set to Sedentary even though I'm a stay at home mom and average about 12000 steps Monday through Friday (workouts included) I let it adjust for me. I try to eat most of my calories, and it seems quite accurate.

Christine_72

I'm set at sedentary, without purposeful exercise i max out at 3-4k steps. With exercise i aim for a minimum of 13,000 steps.

Heather4448

I set my activity level as sedentary and let my Fitbit adjust my exercise calories.

PAV8888

savithny wrote: »

When you say you eat your "exercise calories" back - what do you mean? Are you counting your walking and housework?

If you are counting your walking as exercise, then you cannot count it as your lifestyle.

Look at how many steps you get in a day. How many of them are from activities that you are logging as exercise? Subtract them from your total. If your total steps after you subtract counted activities is less than 6,000, you should probably use "sedentary."

If you use your walking around to decide you are "lightly active" and you count them as exercise, you're double-counting.

The above is the *correct* procedure when manually adding exercise calories WITHOUT a connected tracker!

It is **NOT** the correct procedure when dealing with an automatically linked activity tracker, and more specifically a Fitbit.

Regardless of initial activity chosen, WITH NEGATIVE ADJUSTMENTS ENABLED, at midnight, your calories spent will be what your Fitbit calculated them to be and your eating goal will be your Fitbit calculated TDEE less the MFP daily deficit you have selected.

The accounting adjustment needed to equalise your MFP logged calories to what Fitbit believes you spent for the day gets performed through the mechanism provided by the "exercise" adjustment.

In reality, a Fitbit generated exercise adjustment does NOT reflect which calories came from exercise and which calories came from daily living. It just equalises your daily totals between MFP and Fitbit (*)

(*) If you directly log exercise on MFP you might be imposing your own values on Fitbit as opposed to accepting the values that the band has calculated for you. You can use the Fitbit web page to remove any exercises that are imported from MFP. This will allow Fitbit to calculate your day based on its own measurements.