Can you manually log steps?

debywindjammer

Hi everyone. I work in a prison so I can’t wear my Fitbit all day. Can someone tell me if there is a way to manually log steps or walking into MyFitnessPal so I can see my earned calories at the end of the day? I can wear one of those old style pedometers at work and walk a lot (I’m a nurse) so I know I get lots of activity that the app isn’t aware of.

lynn_glenmont

I would keep track for a week and if you're reasonably consistent in the number of steps you get in a day (say, within a couple thousand steps variation), you should just include it in your activity level. I'm sure someone will come along who knows for sure, but I think MFP considers up to 4,000 steps to be sedentary, 4,001 to 7,000 lightly active, 7,001 to 10,000 active, and 10,000+ very active.

I don't know that MFP has a per-step entry in the exercise database, but there are walking entries. If your pedometer tells you minutes walking and distance, you could use those figures to work out time spent walking at a given rate. I'm sure there are lots of converters online if all you have is number of steps.

cwolfman13

debywindjammer wrote: »

Hi everyone. I work in a prison so I can’t wear my Fitbit all day. Can someone tell me if there is a way to manually log steps or walking into MyFitnessPal so I can see my earned calories at the end of the day? I can wear one of those old style pedometers at work and walk a lot (I’m a nurse) so I know I get lots of activity that the app isn’t aware of.

Since this is occupational, that activity should really just be set in your activity level. The problem with manually adding steps is that your activity level, even if set to sedentary is going to include a measure of those steps already. The benefit of a FitBit is that those additional earned calories are actually just a reconciliation of your activity level set in MFP to your activity per FitBit...the calories you get aren't for the full measure of steps you've actually taken, just steps above and beyond what your activity level is set to.

kshama2001

debywindjammer wrote: »

Hi everyone. I work in a prison so I can’t wear my Fitbit all day. Can someone tell me if there is a way to manually log steps or walking into MyFitnessPal so I can see my earned calories at the end of the day? I can wear one of those old style pedometers at work and walk a lot (I’m a nurse) so I know I get lots of activity that the app isn’t aware of.

Like others have said, probably best to just set it in your activity level.



Have you worn the "dumb" pedometer at work? How many steps do you get?

lorrpb

If you know your steps from a manual pedometer, figure out your stride length as well. Then you can do a little math at the end of each day to get your total distance then log your walking in miles in mfp.