Does MFP count sedentary as 5000 steps at least?

cmentis182

So, I am very new to this. And my friend who has been using MFP for quite sometime says, MFP counts your sedentary lifestyle as 5000 steps regularly.

Context : I am 150cm/4'11'' and 115lbs/52-ish kgs. I have been meaning to lose about 15 pounds by the end of this year. I am not really sure how much do I eat, hence joined MFP to keep track of it. MFP shows, to maintain my weight without any exercise I need to eat about 1440 calories. So, I am assuming if I eat about 1300 calories and workout to burn about 200-250 more, that's around 2100-2200 calories of deficit a week. Which is around 9000 calories of deficit a month, meaning about 2.5 pound of lose a month.

But I have recently bought a cheap wrist band that shows calorie burn and step counts (MI band 4) and it shows if I have an intensive workout of about an hour, I burn about 250-300 calories but my steps including that workout for the day never exceeds more than 7-8000 a day. **I work from home and almost always on computer**. So if MFP counts sedentary as 5000+ steps, does it give that 1440 calories to maintain including that? Meaning I need to burn more than 250 calories doing that one hour of more than moderate pace, not still extreme workout' to lose weight?

I know weight loss is not linear but it would be helpful to get some ideas on this matter.

Thank you beforehand.

PAV8888

Everything is estimates and all these calculations only provide a reasonable starting point for your situation.

*IF* you track CONSISTENTLY -- doesn't even have to be accurately; just consistently -- after a length of time your own numbers will be a better predictor than any online estimator.

In terms of a reasonable starting point there is no particular reason to doubt the MFP starting numbers.

A 7-8K step person, captured as a mixed activity value without taking into account the split between work and exercise would be at the top end of lightly active / bottom end of active for MFP purposes. This is an activity factor of between 1.4 and 1.6.

Thus the caloric estimate for the person would be between 1.4 and 1.6 * BMR calories. You can find your BMR by searching mfp bmr, or hitting the sailrabbit.com/bmr page (sailrabbit is a TDEE calculator it wraps your exercise in your activity, mfp expects you add your exercise when you do it.

A sedentary (not very active) person will usually exhaust the allowances of that setting by about 3500 steps.

It is reasonable to place yourself as sedentary plus a percentage of your exercise calories to account for the fact that exercise calories as given are often GROSS; whereas MFP at the sedentary level has already assigned to the time period in question an amount of calories equal to BMR * 1.25 (not BMR * 1 which is the usual definition of net)

It is reasonable to look at your Xiaomi band total energy expenditure for the day and mentally subtract 300 Cal (based on what you indicate).

My thoughts are that all these methods are basically yielding an ESTIMATE for you of AROUND 1750 Cal to maintain and about 1450 to lose at the rate you want.

**ESTIMATE** <-- logging every day as accurately and consistently as you can. weighing every day using a scale that you place on an unyielding surface and which you use under similar conditions while recording your weight in a weight trend app or web site and then consider your weight TREND movement over a period of 4-6 weeks that includes a monthly hormonal cycle if so afflicted... well... THAT is what will tell you whether the estimates are describing YOU!

To see progress you don't have to be perfect every day... just good enough more often than not!

Sure looks to me that you've got a good plan!

cmentis182

PAV8888 wrote: »

Everything is estimates and all these calculations only provide a reasonable starting point for your situation.

*IF* you track CONSISTENTLY -- doesn't even have to be accurately; just consistently -- after a length of time your own numbers will be a better predictor than any online estimator.

In terms of a reasonable starting point there is no particular reason to doubt the MFP starting numbers.

A 7-8K step person, captured as a mixed activity value without taking into account the split between work and exercise would be at the top end of lightly active / bottom end of active for MFP purposes. This is an activity factor of between 1.4 and 1.6.

Thus the caloric estimate for the person would be between 1.4 and 1.6 * BMR calories. You can find your BMR by searching mfp bmr, or hitting the sailrabbit.com/bmr page (sailrabbit is a TDEE calculator it wraps your exercise in your activity, mfp expects you add your exercise when you do it.

A sedentary (not very active) person will usually exhaust the allowances of that setting by about 3500 steps.

It is reasonable to place yourself as sedentary plus a percentage of your exercise calories to account for the fact that exercise calories as given are often GROSS; whereas MFP at the sedentary level has already assigned to the time period in question an amount of calories equal to BMR * 1.25 (not BMR * 1 which is the usual definition of net)

It is reasonable to look at your Xiaomi band total energy expenditure for the day and mentally subtract 300 Cal (based on what you indicate).

My thoughts are that all these methods are basically yielding an ESTIMATE for you of AROUND 1750 Cal to maintain and about 1450 to lose at the rate you want.

**ESTIMATE** <-- logging every day as accurately and consistently as you can. weighing every day using a scale that you place on an unyielding surface and which you use under similar conditions while recording your weight in a weight trend app or web site and then consider your weight TREND movement over a period of 4-6 weeks that includes a monthly hormonal cycle if so afflicted... well... THAT is what will tell you whether the estimates are describing YOU!

To see progress you don't have to be perfect every day... just good enough more often than not!

Sure looks to me that you've got a good plan!

This is extremely helpful. Thank you so much XD