Am I sedentary?

thiswillhappen

Hi all, I've been on this app for a while and I have successfully lost weight in the past (but now I've gained some of it back). I usually put "moderately active" on my fitness/diet profile because I work out 5-6 times a week and I walk a lot as my primary form of transportation, but I realize now the examples are related to the activity in your job, teacher etc. I have a desk job and sit at my desk most of the day, 5 days a week.

I have now set my activity level to "sedentary", and that has given me a 1200 calorie daily goal, which seems pretty low to me. Before my goal was around 1520.

What do you recommend? Any tips for gauging your activity level on this app for most accurate calorie goals?

TavistockToad

how far are you walking per day?

crb426

I suggest putting "sedentary" or "lightly active" (base it on your job/daily non-workout activities) and then adding in your exercise. This will up your calories based on your workouts.

MelanieCN77

Depending on how much you are walking you might be more than sedentary, but then you can also separately log your other workouts so you'll gain the extra cals from those.

kathleennf

"I suggest putting "sedentary" or "lightly active" (base it on your job/daily non-workout activities) and then adding in your exercise. This will up your calories based on your workouts. "

This is exactly what I do. It's been very accurate for me actually.

LivingtheLeanDream

If you're doing more than 5000 steps in the days you aren't sedentary.

seska422

The app is set up for you to set your activity level for your life in general and then add exercise calories. However, it might be more convenient for you to set a higher activity level to account for your average exercise so that you won't need to track exercise daily.

Think of it this way: if someone had 1200 + 250 for added exercise or 1450 because they chose a higher activity level, both would result in a 1450 calorie budget.

lemurcat12

I started at sedentary but realized that I walk enough that it's really lightly active -- I live in a city and don't drive much at all. If that's you (or if you run around after kids or otherwise get in a reasonable amount of activity in daily life), lightly active might be more reasonable the sedentary. I then added intentional exercise on top.

thiswillhappen

Thanks all! this is helpful. I generally walk 10,000 - 12,000 steps a day, sometimes up to 15,000 or more on a heavier workout day. I like the idea of putting in "sedentary" and then adding in my exercise. I do not think that my FitBit calories have been syncing properly with my MFP app because MFP is not considering my burned calories as it assumes that I am "active", though I have a desk job.

cmriverside

1200 is really really hard. Ask me how I know.

If you've previously lost weight at 1500, stick to that. 1500 is fairly easy.

The Goal wizard gives me way too few calories if I just input my actual activity. I have to use Moderately Active even though I'm retired, single, living in a tiny condo (so not a lot of activity - plus I'm older, and it assumes I need a lot less.) Then I still enter my purposeful exercise and it's still a bit low.


What I'm saying is - 1200 is hard. 1500 really makes it easier and if you've used it before, use it again. Keep good records for a month and see where you end up. You'll be happier and you definitely need more than 1200. Disregard the Activity for a job, because you do a lot of walking in your daily life and that is part of your daily activity. Use purposeful exercise as the Exercise (added calories.)

kimny72

thiswillhappen wrote: »

Hi all, I've been on this app for a while and I have successfully lost weight in the past (but now I've gained some of it back). I usually put "moderately active" on my fitness/diet profile because I work out 5-6 times a week and I walk a lot as my primary form of transportation, but I realize now the examples are related to the activity in your job, teacher etc. I have a desk job and sit at my desk most of the day, 5 days a week.

I have now set my activity level to "sedentary", and that has given me a 1200 calorie daily goal, which seems pretty low to me. Before my goal was around 1520.

What do you recommend? Any tips for gauging your activity level on this app for most accurate calorie goals?

Any activity you do pretty much every day should be part of your MFP activity level.

Any exercise you don't do every day should be logged as exercise and then you eat back those calories.

So if you aren't including your 5-6 workouts a week in your activity level, you should be logging them as exercise. And anytime you walk somewhere it should also be logged. So unless you have days where you don't work out and you don't take a walk, you would not actually need to eat only 1200 cals.

TavistockToad

thiswillhappen wrote: »

Thanks all! this is helpful. I generally walk 10,000 - 12,000 steps a day, sometimes up to 15,000 or more on a heavier workout day. I like the idea of putting in "sedentary" and then adding in my exercise. I do not think that my FitBit calories have been syncing properly with my MFP app because MFP is not considering my burned calories as it assumes that I am "active", though I have a desk job.

Ignore that, didn't see the bit about the fitbit.

Set yourself to sedentary and fitbit should do the rest

scrapjen

Your fitbit "burn" won't come through at all unless it exceeds what MFP thinks you should be getting according to your setting. I'm anything but sedentary most days (I often hit 30k during the week) but I still set myself to sedentary here on MFP. I can see that if I wasn't as active as I am, I WOULD be limited to 1200 calories. But any and all activity (whether it be workouts or general movement) comes across and does bump up the intake allowance, and I can better "see" my activity credit, which it motivating to me. There are days I don't get any exercise in, and on those days I really do need to be limiting calories more.

sijomial

Would recommend reading the informational stickies at the top of the various forums and learning how this tool works. There's loads of useful info there.
If you use this site as intended activity and purposeful exercise are entirely separate - you get calories added for exercise after the event, not as part of your base calories.

The activity setting isn't JUST your job though, if walking is your primary form of transport you aren't sedentary and you are making your allowance too low.

You also aren't understanding how your Fitbit and MyFitnessPal are (or should be) interacting. Your Fitbit is (or should be) setting a variable daily amount via adjustments.
Set your activity miles away from reality and you get big adjustments, set it close to reality and get small adjustments.

maura_tasi

I suggest keeping it at sedentary and logging your exercise calories as you get them. You can start by eating half of them back to see how your weight loss goes for a bit and then determine if you should increase or decrease how much you're eating back. If you have a fitness tracker linked to MFP and get alot of steps those calories will automatically be added to your exercise count as well! I always found it better to keep my activity level set to sedentary and working with it the from there. My calorie intake is set to 1240 but very rarely do I only eat that much since I do exercise every day and get a decent amount of steps in.

Edit: sorry I totally missed the part about your Fitbit! Monday brain today that's forsure haha

animatorswearbras

TavistockToad wrote: »

thiswillhappen wrote: »

Thanks all! this is helpful. I generally walk 10,000 - 12,000 steps a day, sometimes up to 15,000 or more on a heavier workout day. I like the idea of putting in "sedentary" and then adding in my exercise. I do not think that my FitBit calories have been syncing properly with my MFP app because MFP is not considering my burned calories as it assumes that I am "active", though I have a desk job.

light active to cover the walking to work/at work.

log purposeful exercise separately and eat back those calories.

This is exactly what I do and put as lightly active, I walk to work but I have a desk job I average about 7500 steps a day, I put my purposeful workouts on top.

I originally had myself as sedentary and then added the cals for when I walked to work it pretty much worked out the same as just putting lightly active and not logging my walking.

Francl27

TavistockToad wrote: »

thiswillhappen wrote: »

Thanks all! this is helpful. I generally walk 10,000 - 12,000 steps a day, sometimes up to 15,000 or more on a heavier workout day. I like the idea of putting in "sedentary" and then adding in my exercise. I do not think that my FitBit calories have been syncing properly with my MFP app because MFP is not considering my burned calories as it assumes that I am "active", though I have a desk job.

Ignore that, didn't see the bit about the fitbit.

Set yourself to sedentary and fitbit should do the rest

This. Setting yourself as active on MFP with a fitbit linked means that MFP will always overestimate your calorie burn too, and you will 'lose' 200 calories by midnight if your activity during the day isn't consistent.

lemurcat12

thiswillhappen wrote: »

Thanks all! this is helpful. I generally walk 10,000 - 12,000 steps a day, sometimes up to 15,000 or more on a heavier workout day. I like the idea of putting in "sedentary" and then adding in my exercise. I do not think that my FitBit calories have been syncing properly with my MFP app because MFP is not considering my burned calories as it assumes that I am "active", though I have a desk job.

It was probably working right. MFP won't add calories until you hit what it considers active.

That said, I think the best way to work it with a Fitbit is set the Fitbit to sedentary and then let it go. Any step based (running, walking) activity will be included. It's okay to log it too, but be careful to be correct about start and stop time or it will double count.

PAV8888

10-12 is MFP active
15 is mfp very active
If integration with you set at sedentary is not delivering similar numbers by the end of the day then you have a problem with your integration and set up

Maxxitt

I get about 8000 "steps" (per apple watch) a day, and chose "sedentary" on MFP and let MFP add back calories (a whopping 40-60 a day lol). Of the 3-4 miles I walk a day, half is outside on the dog walks (so not brisk) and the other is just daily living as a retired person. The data are holding up as to expected scale loss (my deficit is 200-250 calories a day) & I am losing about 1# a month, maybe a bit more. I am within 10 # of a healthy weight and I am not in a hurry so this works for me.