Activity level??

ashleystark116

So I’ve been working as a food courier the past couple months, and it is really intense. My Fitbit calculated I burned an extra 1900 calories a day per 10 hour work day with about 20,000 steps of pure running, plus I also water a huge garden every day (15 minutes), prepping my food for the day (20 minutes) cooking my boyfriends breakfast lunch and dinner every day (30 minutes) walk my dog (1.5 hours) and clean the house/car (30-40 minutes). I only really get a couple hours of relaxation. Should I set mfp as active and eat back some of my exercise calories? Sorry not sure here I’ve lost about 40 pounds in these past 2 months and I don’t think that’s normal.

goal06082021

MFP's system wants to know about your activity level outside of purposeful exercise, so yes, that sounds like you should mark yourself as Active and eat the number of calories it gives you. Nothing you've listed is purposeful exercise so you wouldn't have any exercise calories to eat back, unless you also went for a walk/hit the gym/went swimming/whatever on top of all of that.

ashleystark116

Yeah I don’t really do purposeful exercise because I’m getting enough at work. I was asking because even if I set myself as very active, I’m still dropping weight really quickly so I’m wondering if I should do sedentary and eat back my Fitbit calories?

Lietchi

You could try that too, sure. It's not a guarantee that it will be better, but it's worth a try, since you're potentially simply too active for MFP's activity level options. (other possibility: your metabolism is faster than average)
You don't actually need to set it at sedentary, any activity level will work, since MFP compares the total calorie burn (higher activity level = smaller adjustment)

Whatever your method for getting your calorie goal, the important thing is to look at your results. If you're losing faster than intended, increase your intake. In MFP you could 'tweak' your calorie goal by choosing a slower weight loss rate than intended (or even choose maintenance or weight gain) which will increase your calorie goal.

cwolfman13

ashleystark116 wrote: »

Yeah I don’t really do purposeful exercise because I’m getting enough at work. I was asking because even if I set myself as very active, I’m still dropping weight really quickly so I’m wondering if I should do sedentary and eat back my Fitbit calories?

I wouldn't do that...if your device is synched, you should be getting additional calories even if you're set as active if your actual activity exceeds the MFP multipliers. You should be accounting for the adjustment you're already getting.

Also keep in mind that calculators and gadgets are all just estimates...ultimately it's the real world data that counts and you can manually adjust your target to whatever you think it needs to be.

sijomial

Don't pick sedentary when you are a million miles away from being sedentary.

You will get huge adjustments, surely picking something closer to reality would allow you to plan your eating much better/easier? The total will be the same so picking clearly the very wrong setting is just making life hard for yourself.

Either use MFP to set your goal or use Fitbit but the basics are still if you are losing weight too rapidly - eat more!

If you decide to use MFP you can also simply manually set a calorie goal based on your track record of weight loss.