Logging exercise

kathymhardy

I am retired and healthy. Apart from normal day to day activities ie housework, etc, I also walk for an hour most days on my treadmill (4/10 incline and pace set at 4.80). And normally manage to record over 10k steps per day. Should I put myself down as being active or lightly active?

heybales

If you are NOT logging that exercise separately as MFP is designed to do (and that has some caveats when done) and just want to call it part of average daily life (which can work fine), on top of what is likely already Lightly-Active (housework) by itself, I'd suggest 10K steps daily is easily Active, if not popping over to Very Active.

Try Active.

Log your food correctly and accurately (realizing labels have potential 20% inaccuracy anyway), and see if a reasonable rate of loss matches after a month with what you thought you selected.

If it's unreasonable you'll have extra water weight fluctuations that will make things confusing so harder to tell.

Any difference is inaccuracy somewhere, could be activity level setting, can easily be food logging.
Adjust from there.

spiriteagle99

It depends on whether you follow mfp as it is designed, so that your activity level is separate from deliberate exercise, or use a calculator that includes exercise in your TDEE.

I am also retired and do an hour or more of serious exercise (running) 5 days a week, plus I walk the dog a couple of miles every day. When I am not exercising, I mostly sit and read or watch TV or the computer. Housekeeping doesn't take that much effort for two of us. I list myself as sedentary and log the exercise after I do it. That works for me. I have been able to lose weight and then maintain that loss for several years. I probably undercount the calories I burn, though MFP's numbers are usually pretty similar to those of my Garmin, but that allows me a little more flexibility for my calories. On days I eat more, it doesn't seem to cause weight gain.

cwolfman13

kathymhardy wrote: »

I am retired and healthy. Apart from normal day to day activities ie housework, etc, I also walk for an hour most days on my treadmill (4/10 incline and pace set at 4.80). And normally manage to record over 10k steps per day. Should I put myself down as being active or lightly active?

10K steps is generally considered at minimum moderately active to active depending on how deliberate in nature those steps are...ie going for a good paced walk vs milling about the house...it is more than sedentary or light active either way. If this is indeed representative of a normal day the vast majority of the time, there is no issue in including it in your activity level, you just wouldn't want to log your walks and such as exercise as it is already accounted for in your activity level and you would be double dipping logging it again.