What activity level am I?

ejplese

I have a 9-5 desk job but workout hard at least 6 days a week. Throw in housework and running a few errands here and there. Should I select a sedentary activity level just because of my job?

MikePTY

If you are using MFP for your calculations, then yes, that's probably best (depending on the frequency and duration of your housework and errands, possibly lightly active). Your intentional exercise is separate. That's why MFP directs you to eat back your exercise calories. That's an important part of the process.

DaintyWhisper

I would personally select sedentary and then add your workouts and steps in separately.

cwolfman13

ejplese wrote: »

I have a 9-5 desk job but workout hard at least 6 days a week. Throw in housework and running a few errands here and there. Should I select a sedentary activity level just because of my job?

You will notice that the descriptors for activity level in MFP make no mention of exercise. The way MFP is designed is to select your activity level as per your day to day humdrum before any deliberate exercise. Exercise is logged after the fact and you get additional calories to account for that activity.

I have a desk job, but when I selected sedentary I was losing faster than targeted so I upped it to light active. At the time I had a 2 year old and infant at home...between chasing them around, taking care of housework, cooking, fixing this or that, and generally being a fidgety person I was light active despite my desk job.

cmriverside

I truly am sedentary and yet I use the Moderately Active setting...I have to eat quite a lot more than the sedentary setting suggests.

The only way for you to know the correct setting for you is to pick one, log food, log exercise that is purposeful exercise - eat more calories on exercise days, and then in 4-6 weeks make any adjustments you need to make based on that 4-6 weeks' data. It's just an experiment we all have to run and your own data will always tell you what to do.