10k steps...what should my activity level be?

sumayaiphone

Hi, sorry if this has been answered I couldnt find it in the search bar. I am a female and My activity level is set at sedentary because I have a desk job and i dont walk alot. Recently I got a fitbit and its been around 4-5 weeks where i am meeting my 10k step target. I am on a 1200 calories diet do I have to change my activity level to active as i feel my body is used to doing 10k steps and doesnt feel its a form of workout? Should I eat back half the exercise calories or leave them as it is.

PAV8888

People who are sedentary tend to end up with around 3,500 steps
People who don't walk a lot don't usually end up with 10,000 steps.
People who are active tend to end up with around 10,000 steps!
Your Fitbit estimates your calories independently of MFP.
If you've connected the two and you see an adjustment, at midnight, that adjustment represents the difference between Fitbit's and MFPs estimates of your caloric consumption.
If you are logging using a scale and selecting database entries that you verify as correct you should probably eat most if not all of your Fitbit TDEE and adjust in 4 to 6 weeks based on your actual weight trend results.

Kittyy1994

sumayaiphone wrote: »

Hi, sorry if this has been answered I couldnt find it in the search bar. I am a female and My activity level is set at sedentary because I have a desk job and i dont walk alot. Recently I got a fitbit and its been around 4-5 weeks where i am meeting my 10k step target. I am on a 1200 calories diet do I have to change my activity level to active as i feel my body is used to doing 10k steps and doesnt feel its a form of workout? Should I eat back half the exercise calories or leave them as it is.

Same!!! I have desk job so set at sedentary but walk dog morning and night but don’t count this as a “workout” but I have just started tracking and hitting around 10k steps a day.
At the moment I am eating at maintenance and letting walks create the deficit and have lost around 5kg (11lbs) in 5 weeks😃

WinoGelato

I also have a desk job and after about 6 months on MFP (several years ago) set at b/w 1200-1400 cals, I got a FitBit and realized I was averaging around 10k steps/day. I got the good advice on here to sync my device, enable negative calorie adjustments, and change my activity level to active. I did so, it increased my base calories but still gave me adjustments which I ate back, and I lost all the weight I set out to lose and then transitioned to maintenance all while trusting and eating back those adjustments. For a period of time I was highly active, averaging around 15k steps a day and my TDEE according to my FitBit was around 2250. If I had been that active and only eating 1200 calories I would have been vastly under fueling my body.

Johnd2000

Slightly off topic, but I read an interesting article this week about the 10k steps target that most trackers default to.

Apparently the number was chosen by an early Chinese manufacturer of pedometers, purely as a marketing gimmick, because the Chinese character for 10,000 looks a bit like a man walking. They sold their device as a “10k step counter” and used the character as a logo.

Well it made me smile.

sumayaiphone

thank you all for your very helpful advice!

missiontofitness

I have mine as lightly active; I also have a desk job, but tend to have to walk to get to meetings, and like to be up and about whenever I can. I don't log anything as exercise unless my fitbit picks up on it and it's either something substantial I did, or it's a planned workout/walk I'm doing. I found that this has worked well for me!

Unknown

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sijomial

sumayaiphone wrote: »

Hi, sorry if this has been answered I couldnt find it in the search bar. I am a female and My activity level is set at sedentary because I have a desk job and i dont walk alot. Recently I got a fitbit and its been around 4-5 weeks where i am meeting my 10k step target. I am on a 1200 calories diet do I have to change my activity level to active as i feel my body is used to doing 10k steps and doesnt feel its a form of workout? Should I eat back half the exercise calories or leave them as it is.

Your body may be "used to it" but that's nothing to do with burning calories - it takes energy to move mass over distance. A super fit individual and a couch potato who weigh the same and walk the same distance with one person finding it easy and the other finding it hard would burn virtually the same calories.

Whether it feels like exercise or a workout doesn't change the fact that you are burning a lot of calories with that high step count. Not really seeing the point in using a tracker and then not using the data it gives you.

When I had a sedentary desk job and walked about 6,000 steps I set myself to Lightly Active. When I retired and moved more and sat down less I had to bump it up to Active.

ginnytez

I have mine set at lightly active, get in 10,000 - 15,000 steps a day (more some days). I don't add it as extra exercise, just let MFP and Fitbit talk to each other, eat a percentage of the exercise calories back. Try to make sure minimum net is 1200 (most days more) and am losing an average of .5 a week.