Sedentary vs Lightly Active

randerson6571

Hi,

So, curious if I’m considered Sedentary or slightly Active. I have a desk job but I work out a few times a week. Are these activities levels based off of exercises? Or more just my base level of activity without purposeful exercise.

Danp

Activity level in the MFP sense is 'normal life' not including deliberate, purposeful 'workouts' which are counted for separately when they occur.

That said the activity levels are just general ballpark figures anyway so pick on that you think is correct and, based on the results you get you can move up or down a level.

AliNouveau

^^^ what the star trek guy there said

Are you at your desk for the entire time you're working? I think it gives descriptions for the activity levels I'd suspect a desk job is sedentary unless you walk to work or something

Danp

AliNouveau wrote: »

^^^ what the star trek guy there said

Are you at your desk for the entire time you're working? I think it gives descriptions for the activity levels I'd suspect a desk job is sedentary unless you walk to work or something

LOL! I'm not gonna lie. That hit the mark and stung a little

lgfrie

Sounds like "sedentary" tbh. Intentional exercise doesn't count. Sitting at a desk all day is not Lightly Active.

Start with Sedentary, diet for 5-6 weeks, see where it gets you. You'll either lose weight in line with the weekly weight loss goal you fed MFP, or you'll lose more. If you lose more, do the Goals over and set it to Lightly Active. If you lose less, well, get up and move around more, because there's nowhere to go from Sedentary except "coma" LOL

It's a learning / try things out process. Hard to nail on Day 1 and no reason to. Just get into it and see how the numbers add up, but try to give it a solid 5-6 weeks before drawing any firm conclusions.

LivingtheLeanDream

Sedentary sounds about right.

JaxxieKat

I work a job where I'm at my desk a bit, but I'm in a warehouse pulling orders in the morning. And, when shipments come in, I'm not at my desk at all and will usually log 14,000 steps that day easily. I walk 6 days a week and strength train 3 days a week. I set my activity level at lightly active, my goal weekly weight loss at .5lb, and don't track my workouts. I'm slowly, but steadily, making it toward my goal.

Cricketmad88

I sit at my desk all day (on here mostly!) so I am definitely sedentary. I put my walking to work and work outs on as extras and seem to be losing as expected.

Privatesandbank

randerson6571 wrote: »

Hi,

So, curious if I’m considered Sedentary or slightly Active. I have a desk job but I work out a few times a week. Are these activities levels based off of exercises? Or more just my base level of activity without purposeful exercise.

I sit at a desk job all day, but I workout 7 hours a week. I don’t eat back exercise calories so my calorie level is lightly active. If I was eating the “sedentary” calories I’d be in an almost 2000 calorie deficit. My TDEE is 3000. Then again I’m 20 and almost 6’. I don’t consider someone who runs 50 miles a week sedentary even if they have a desk job, unlike most of these forums.

Use activity multipliers in this equation. Most people are actually 1.4-1.6. To have a multiplier of 1.2 you have to be an actual vegetable, a complete slob who never moves or in a coma. https://chomps.com/blogs/news/what-is-bmr-tdee

JaxxieKat

beacon8 wrote: »

I don’t think someone who is in a wheel chair or disabled is a slob or in a coma. I am one of those people. I prefer to not make assumptions in that regard.

Thank you for saying this.

tinkerbellang83

mentallyinmaldives wrote: »

randerson6571 wrote: »

Hi,

So, curious if I’m considered Sedentary or slightly Active. I have a desk job but I work out a few times a week. Are these activities levels based off of exercises? Or more just my base level of activity without purposeful exercise.

I sit at a desk job all day, but I workout 7 hours a week. I don’t eat back exercise calories so my calorie level is lightly active. If I was eating the “sedentary” calories I’d be in an almost 2000 calorie deficit. My TDEE is 3000. Then again I’m 20 and almost 6’. I don’t consider someone who runs 50 miles a week sedentary even if they have a desk job, unlike most of these forums.

Use activity multipliers in this equation. Most people are actually 1.4-1.6. To have a multiplier of 1.2 you have to be an actual vegetable, a complete slob who never moves or in a coma. https://chomps.com/blogs/news/what-is-bmr-tdee

You'd only be in an almost 2000 calorie deficit because you're not using MFP as it's designed, if you did it would probably be correct. MFP doesn't use the TDEE method, it uses NEAT. For the record sedentary in MFP is BMR x 1.25, not 1.2.

In the case of my own calorie adjustments from Garmin, sedentary is around 2500 steps per day. There are many reasons why people may not get much normal activity in their day - they may drive to/from work and work long hours at a desk, may have an illness that restricts their activity/causes excessive fatigue or be recovering from an injury. So I find the bolded to be quite a small-minded comment.

Personally if I drive to/from work I do tend to get about 5000 steps per day because I can't sit still long when I am at home so I tend to keep myself at Lightly Active.

Unless you have a consistent workout routine which includes running or walking (like you have yourself) it's better to use MFP as it's intended and use the NEAT (Non Excercise Activity Thermogenesis) activity level as it's stated "How would you describe your normal daily activities?" this is your home/work/school life, not exercise and then log exercise separately.

So in OP's case:

randerson6571 wrote: »

Hi,

So, curious if I’m considered Sedentary or slightly Active. I have a desk job but I work out a few times a week.

Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)

randerson6571 wrote: »

Hi,
Are these activities levels based off of exercises? Or more just my base level of activity without purposeful exercise.

It is based on your level of activity without purposeful exercise. Exercise should be logged separately.

sijomial

You could run a marathon every week and still correctly have a sedentary activity setting if you sat around all day.

But remember the setting isn't just your job - it's all your activity excluding exercise so factor in your whole day and weekend activity. When I had a desk job I was easily Lightly Active as I built quite a lot of movement into my normal days.

"Desk job" alone isn't really enough information to make more than a guess.
If you have a lot to lose I'd lean towards setting sedentary, if you have little to lose I'd lean towards setting higher if in any doubt. In both cases it's just a start point from which you can adjust if required when you start to see your weight trend.

cwolfman13

randerson6571 wrote: »

Hi,

So, curious if I’m considered Sedentary or slightly Active. I have a desk job but I work out a few times a week. Are these activities levels based off of exercises? Or more just my base level of activity without purposeful exercise.

Use the descriptors. MFP's calorie targets are based on your day to day...you log intentional exercise after the fact and get additional calories to account for that activity...that is why there is zero mention of exercise in the descriptors. MFP is not a TDEE calculator, it is a NEAT calculator. A TDEE calculator would include exercise in the descriptors and your activity level.

tcunbeliever

still giggling over the Star Trek comment...

I also have a desk job and go with Sedentary, so far so good!

tracydnevins

@beacon8 Please send me a friend request!! I’m looking for all kinds of friends, but your case is similar to mine. No wheelchair, but I have extreme pain, and walking is murder. I had major spine surgery, and I’m left essentially with a bionic back. I’m starting PT soon, and hope it helps.

heybales

When trackers first started coming out and getting synced to MFP, I found the vast majority of comments about receiving decent adjustments from people with desk jobs.

Their job may be sedentary, and their drive to work, so 9-10 hrs of the day.
What about the other 14-15 hrs of the day outside of purposeful exercise, and the weekend?

Most were finding unless they came home and did gaming all night and weekend - basically a bump on a log all day every day - they were NOT sedentary.
4000 steps is avg upper limit of sedentary depending on distance of those steps. That's avg daily.
Just not much at all.

If you have any household responsibilities at all, kids, pets, laundry, cooking, yard, shopping, ect - your average weekly is very easily at Lightly-Active.

Obviously with a tracker for MFP to correct to it really doesn't matter - but no tracker just using MFP, I'd warrant very few are truly Sedentary on a weekly average basis.

Now - if you are cutting out all those busy types of daily activity in order to exercise - you could be bounced back to sedentary.
Usually you can't cut those things out though - just do them faster or lose sleep.

SERmom3

@beacon8 @tracydnevins
I don’t know if you’re using the app or the website, but here are the steps to add friends from the app:

1-Click on the name of the person you want to add.




2-Click on their name again.



3-click the little “add person” icon.



4- enter the info in the highlighted fields and select the check mark. This will send the friend request.



*edited because pics were out of order. Hopefully it works now!

debrakgoogins

tracydnevins wrote: »

@beacon8 Please send me a friend request!! I’m looking for all kinds of friends, but your case is similar to mine. No wheelchair, but I have extreme pain, and walking is murder. I had major spine surgery, and I’m left essentially with a bionic back. I’m starting PT soon, and hope it helps.

Completely off topic of the original post but after PT, if your doc allows it, you might try DDPY yoga. There is a lot of bro-science with their food program so I ignore that part but the workouts are truly phenomenal for rehabilitating your body and regaining mobility. They have workouts for all level of mobility from bed ridden, to chair yoga, to "stand up" which is designed to get you more mobile all the way up to advanced headstand movements. It has helped me tremendously.