Which activity level to choose?

jessiemax76

I am just looking for a bit of guidance on which activity level I should choose.

I am 5ft and 178lbs. I average 13000 steps a day, this is over the last 2 years but I was doing steps even before that, sometimes I do a few thousand more but this is average. My job involves assisting elderly, could be cleaning, driving them somewhere, shopping, personal care etc

I am doing 3 - 4 hours of cardio a week, treadmill walking or stationary bike, moderate level. I have also started doing some light weights 3 x a week ( I am really weak) but got to start somewhere.

I have put in lightly active, but I am not sure this is right. I put my goal to lose half a kilo a week.

Any comments appreciated.

mlinci

That’s way more than lightly active.

kommodevaran

It's really hard for most people to gauge activity level from the descriptions in setup; activity level here does not include exercise, you are supposed to eat back exercise calories. You just have to pick a setting, then stick to your calorie target and keep track of your progress. If you feel fine and lose as expected, you know you picked the right setting.

jessiemax76

mlinci - that's why I asked the question as written down it does sound way more, I think I am just having a hard time with it as I don't feel really active. I feel pretty unfit and also manage to get a lot of sitting in.

Oh I did lightly active as lifestyle and then I have been adding the cardio in as an entry. This gives me 1440 calories a day to eat before exercise calories and so far I have not eaten these back. I feel ok on this but obviously getting use to not eating whatever whenever.

Only just over a week into this and so far my scale said 1.9 kilo down and then 700 grams up. There really isn't enough information on weight to know yet.

sijomial

13,000 steps more than lightly active.
Your exercise is a separate item from your activity setting, exercise calories are on top of our daily goal no matter the activity setting you select. Why would you not eat exercise calories back?

You are doing two things to artificially lower your intake (selecting a lower activity setting than reality & ignoring exercise burns).

The art of estimating is to estimate as accurately as possible - not to select an outcome and skew the numbers to fit the outcome.

jessiemax76

I haven't eaten them back as I haven't felt like I have needed them, definitely not starving. Also today for example I burnt 265 calories in 45 minutes, it just doesn't seem a lot and that is going by the mfp calculator, and I keep reading these estimates are generally overstated.
So the theory is then I should be on track to losing more than half a kilo a week due to my inaccurate estimating.

sijomial

jessiemax76 wrote: »

I haven't eaten them back as I haven't felt like I have needed them, definitely not starving. Also today for example I burnt 265 calories in 45 minutes, it just doesn't seem a lot and that is going by the mfp calculator, and I keep reading these estimates are generally overstated.
So the theory is then I should be on track to losing more than half a kilo a week due to my inaccurate estimating.

You have been dieting for a week, how you feel in week one when you are full of enthusiasm and motivated may not be how you feel many months down the line. Be cautious of making dieting harder than it needs to be - it's far more important you are successful than the speed of loss and adherence is a huge part of that.

265 cals is a significant amount for a petite woman and it's more than half of the calorie deficit you have selected. If it's over-stated I bet it's closer to reality than zero!

jessiemax76

Thanks for the responses.
I changed my activity level to active. I will be honest and say I also changed the goal from half a kilo a week to 750 grams a week. Which gives me the same calorie level I have been doing.
I will just monitor it for a couple of weeks.
This already feels easier and sustainable.

PAV8888

13k steps on MFP is at the lower levels of VERY active assuming the activity generating the steps is not entered as a separat exercise.

All that it means is that MFP assumes you will burn an amount of calories equal to 1.x * your BMR because of non exercise activities. (The x changes based on your activity setting).

Goals are best not picked up based on desires.

Creating a 20% deficit from the total amount of calories you burn in a day is generally considered the limit of safe and sustainable (maybe 25% while people still have fat reserves sufficient to correctly classify them as obese)

So for 750 to be appropriate for you, your tdee should be in the 3000 to 3700 range depending on how much fat you have available to lose.

jessiemax76

No entering exercise separately, I understand the deficit etc just wanted some validation about how active I really am.

DaisyBlinks

I've found I've had more success setting it to sedentary, and then letting my fitbit add calories in for how much I've walked (and eat those). It'll give you a low number to start with and add them throughout the day. After the first day or two you can see what you should be eating and go with that.

I don't know how accurate it is if you have very low margins of error to work with, but it's been super accurate for myself and my husband.

angelsja

Iam 27 year old female weighing 12stone 9 I do about 9-10k steps Monday to Friday I hit the gym for just over a hour Monday to Friday I don't log my excersise I chose active as my settings and have been given 1560 Cal's a day I don't always eat them and haven't felt hungry does this sound ok?

sijomial

angelsja wrote: »

Iam 27 year old female weighing 12stone 9 I do about 9-10k steps Monday to Friday I hit the gym for just over a hour Monday to Friday I don't log my excersise I chose active as my settings and have been given 1560 Cal's a day I don't always eat them and haven't felt hungry does this sound ok?

@angelsja
Beware that the activity settings on here and on a TDEE site are different.
Active multiplier used by MyFitnessPal is lower than an active setting on a TDEE site for instance.

Why not simply fill in all your details accurately on a TDEE site and then manually set that number as your goal on here?

1560 sounds awfully low to me for someone doing so many steps and more than five hours of exercise a week.

angelsja

But I'm not feeling hungry so why eat if I'm not hungry in truth I could probably eat less as I don't often feel hungry I can go from breakfast till 2 ish without eating if I only ever are when hungry I would hardly eat at all

sijomial

angelsja wrote: »

But I'm not feeling hungry so why eat if I'm not hungry in truth I could probably eat less as I don't often feel hungry I can go from breakfast till 2 ish without eating if I only ever are when hungry I would hardly eat at all

If hunger was a reliable guide to calorie intake there wouldn't be many overweight people in the world!

angelsja

Of course there would people don't only eat because of hunger they eat because it makes them feel good, because they are angry, happy sad it tastes good etc

angelsja

sijomial wrote: »

angelsja wrote: »

Iam 27 year old female weighing 12stone 9 I do about 9-10k steps Monday to Friday I hit the gym for just over a hour Monday to Friday I don't log my excersise I chose active as my settings and have been given 1560 Cal's a day I don't always eat them and haven't felt hungry does this sound ok?

@angelsja
Beware that the activity settings on here and on a TDEE site are different.
Active multiplier used by MyFitnessPal is lower than an active setting on a TDEE site for instance.

Why not simply fill in all your details accurately on a TDEE site and then manually set that number as your goal on here?

1560 sounds awfully low to me for someone doing so many steps and more than five hours of exercise a week.

Did that and it put me at 1497 Cal's a day