Calories burned/exercise/activity level questions

NatashaGeeregat

Hi all! I have a couple questions I’m hoping you can help me with.

I just started a new job that has me much more active than before. I’m a sign spinner for a restaurant and spend 4 hours a day enthusiastically dancing/jumping/waving/etc. I put my activity level as very active. My iPhone has calculated my steps at approx. 30,000 per day! So I’ve been adding my exercise as Dancing, general (as the steps are not converting to calories burned for some reason) But it says I’m burning 1,300 calories!! That seems crazy to me. Is that really accurate?

My calorie intake goal is 1,900 to lose 1.5lbs a week. If I’m burning 1,300 there’s just no way I can eat enough to level it out, that’s over 3,000 calories a day. I’m scared my calorie intake won’t be enough and that I’m going to lose too much weight too quickly.

I’m also confused as to how the activity level works. If I’m logging my exercise everyday should I put my activity level as lower?

Any help or advice would be appreciated! Thanks 😊

lynn_glenmont

It sounds as though you're double-counting your activity, or possibly triple-counting if your iPhone step counter is also synced to MFP. Count yourself as very active, or log the time as dancing, use an activity tracker. Don't do all three. You could use an activity counter and a higher activity level together if you want, so long as you have negative calories enabled.

NatashaGeeregat

My steps are not being counted as calories burned. So if I’m logging my exercise, then I should lower my activity level?

PAV8888

Is tracker connected?
Then just let tracker and MFP deal with issues. Do not log anything yourself. Adjust against automatically generated numbers based on long term actual results. Apple products may be best connected to MFP via an intermediary app such as Pacer.

Even with tracker connected, your base level of activity helps you adjust your calories. Since, for most people, about 16000 steps worth of activity exhausts MFP's "very active" setting, your minimum expected caloric burn would be at least that.

If a tracker is synchronizing automatically and correctly it will NOT be double counting any calories without human intervention to mess with exercise logging in addition to what has been detected automagically.

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A tracker is not connected. Human is logging exercise. Does all of your activity come from your jumping around with none from anything else? i.e. are you outright sedentary outside of exercise, or would you be lightly active outside of exercise?

Let's pretend you're sedentary outside of exercise. I am cheating a tiny bit because it gives me easier numbers
MFP assigns you 1.25x BMR for the time period. Your "exercise" which would probably be "light aerobics" or "light calisthenics" or something similar, will give you 5x BMR approximately in gross calories. So you ought to eat back about 75% of that to actually fully eat back the approximately correct amount of extra calories you spent, which was about 3.5x BMR for the time period of the four hours.

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You could adjust by reducing your target of lbs per week to lose. If you are well beyond very active, but eat very active calories to maintain you are actually eating at a deficit commensurate to your four hours of exercise and you will lose weight according to that.

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Are we even kidding about all this? You are dancing around for 4 hours... in which world would this not be a kitten load more energy getting spent as compared to me sitting here typing on my keyboard for four hours?

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Have fun.

lynn_glenmont

If you find yourself losing weight too quickly, eat more. If you find it hard to eat enough calories, eat more calories-dense foods (e.g., fat). Don't eat "diet" low-calorie foods. Add oil, nuts, butter, nut butters, cheese, cream, gravy, full-fat dairy (yogurt, milk, sour cream), ice cream.