Fitness level

charliepumpkinpie

Can someone please confirm what each fitness category means? I.e what is lightly active and active? If I do 15000 steps per day is that lightly active or active?

ElizabethKalmbach

That should be "Active," I believe. Depending on intensity, you may need to add on a few calories to hit the mark.

I've found that "Active" appears to be a really broad range and I need to do a bit more tweaking with it than I've needed to do with "lightly active" or "sedentary."

Active is like... 10,000 to 23,000 steps per day with the lower levels of activity only having differences of about 3k steps between each level. If I set the app for "Active" it gives me 1450 calories and "Very Active" it gives me 1725ish. Generally, if I go over 14,000 steps, I give myself an extra 100 calories to work with that day, because 1450 just isn't enough to keep me losing at the rate I want without adding those calories back in.

If you're persistently at 15k steps and the "Active" calorie amount leaves you feeling hungry and losing faster than you should be, add in 100-150 more calories per day and see if it's not working out better.

sarko15

It's an activity level, not a fitness level. You aren't supposed to include exercise (unless you don't log your workouts, because if you do, you're counting double and your numbers will be off).

I work a retail job and on days that I work, regularly go over 15000+ steps a day. However, on my days off, I usually get somewhere between 8000-12000. I am set at lightly active, because I feel like it's a more accurate middle ground so I don't have to change my activity level daily. It also gives me more wiggle room to account for inaccuracies in logging.

ElizabethKalmbach

I think that what you should take away from this is that nothing is set in stone, and you should revisit your logs and results every couple weeks and contemplate what is working and what isn't. If you're hungry or tired all the time and losing weight faster than you set your goals to, add some calories or up your baseline activity level. If you're not losing weight after a few weeks, try decreasing your activity level. Move gradually, but keep checking in and comparing your actual lifestyle to your reported goals. Consider recalculating your calories every 10-20 pounds of loss, too.

autumnblade75

If you sync your fitness tracker to MFP and enable negative adjustments, you can set your activity level to whatever you like. If you aren't as active as you claim, negative adjustments will kick in, and if you're more active than you claim, you'll get positive adjustments.

If you don't have a fitness tracker, how do you know how many steps you're taking? Then we're back to asking about what activities make up each part of the day to make some sort of guess at activity level.

ElizabethKalmbach

autumnblade75 wrote: »

If you sync your fitness tracker to MFP and enable negative adjustments, you can set your activity level to whatever you like. If you aren't as active as you claim, negative adjustments will kick in, and if you're more active than you claim, you'll get positive adjustments.

If you don't have a fitness tracker, how do you know how many steps you're taking? Then we're back to asking about what activities make up each part of the day to make some sort of guess at activity level.

There are a ton of really nice fitness trackers out there that don't sync up to MFP. I have a Mi Band 4, which I adore, that syncs with Google Fit, but if you try to sync Google Fit to MFP, you get a bunch of caloric gibberish.

Most cell phones have sufficient hardware these days to handle step tracking, provided you wear your phone most of the day.

MikePTY

15000+ steps is probably classified as very active. Lightly active is a lot less active than people think, and typically starts around 5000 steps. As others have mentioned, this is usually non-exercise activity, so you wouldn't put yourself at very active AND log walking, as that would double count.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

You are definitely not "sedentary."

If your goal is to lose weight, you could try "lightly active" with a 1lb/week deficit (500kcals/day) and see what happens. If you seem to be losing faster than expected, bump it up. (Or, if you want, do it the other way around and bump it down.)

cwolfman13

charliepumpkinpie wrote: »

Can someone please confirm what each fitness category means? I.e what is lightly active and active? If I do 15000 steps per day is that lightly active or active?

The following pedometer indices have been developed to provide a guideline on steps and activity levels:

Sedentary is less than 5,000 steps per day
Low active is 5,000 to 7,499 steps per day
Somewhat active is 7,500 to 9,999 steps per day
Active is more than 10,000 steps per day
Highly active is more than 12,500

https://www.10000steps.org.au/articles/counting-steps/

riffraff2112

15000 would be active (assuming that doesn't include actual exercise from jogs or long walks...unless you do it everyday).

Machka9

My Home > Goals > View Guided Setup.

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)

ironhajee

Leaning towards the "active" portion of the spectrum for sure:)