Need advice about calorie burning at work.

wayne12182
wayne12182 Posts: 10
in Fitness and Exercise
I am wondering how to calculate the calories I burn at my job each day. I am a stocker at a supermarket. My one consistant thing is walking. I am on my feet all day, a lot of the time, walking around the store/warehouse, but some of the time I am pretty stationary whil eI stand to stock a shelf or some such. What I do can vary a lot from day to day, so it's unreliable to just use a blanket activity lik eI have been. I do hav ea pedometer that counts my steps/calories/distance on my iphone, but I am not entirely convinced of it's accuracy, and of course, it does not take other things into account. There is a moderate amount of other things I do, that varies a lot. I'll list them:

2 days out of the week, I lean and buff the floors. It's a fairly large store, and on these 2 days, I basically cover the entire store twice. The other 3 days, I either just buff, or do neither of the other guy has gotten to it.

Pulling/pushing things (palets stacked with stuff that can vary from light things such as paper towels, to heavy thingslike canned foods, sugar, or water.)

Bending down, and reaching up (to stock shelves, setting up a display, or loading a stocking cart. Weight of items I deal with can vary from a negligible bottle of seasoning, to 80 pounds of sugar)

Aside from the walking, all of this is exceedingly difficult to factor in and get a decent calorie burned count for the day. I was wondering if there was anyone here in a similar line of work, or with a good knowledge of these things that could help me out a bit. Any help is appreciated.

Replies

  • hearthemelody
    hearthemelody Posts: 1,025 Member
    What about just listing your activity level as high?

    Wouldn't that cover it?
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    they should be accounted for in your activity level.
  • rdpapag
    rdpapag Posts: 17
    Get a fitbit.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,294 Member
    they should be accounted for in your activity level.
    ^ This

    Set your activity to active to account for that.
  • MrsG31
    MrsG31 Posts: 364 Member
    My husband is an electrican, on his his feet all day, outside, driving heavy machinery, etc. He just recently started MFP and put his activity level as "Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)".
  • sbarella
    sbarella Posts: 713 Member
    You should set to Active at the very least.
  • wayne12182
    wayne12182 Posts: 10
    I see. Thanks for the replies. So it is taking my typical level of activity into account, and only activitie sI go out of my way to burn extra calories should be logged. That makes sense. It's abit of a pain as my days can vary so much. Today, my pedometer says I walked 18,922 steps, 10.418 miles, over a time of 6:32:37, at an average speed of 1.7 mph, and burned 1688.7 calories. That sounds like a lot to me honestly, even though I currently weigh 241, so I am going to try some other pedometers. But anyway, I have had other days where it has said I only went 4 miles. I guess it's good that it's just averaging things for me in the background.

    Thanks again for the replies. I believe I am set to lightly active, as I do not do all of those actiities Ilisted extensively each day. I suppos eI still have to get used to the new lifestyle is all.
  • rdpapag
    rdpapag Posts: 17
    I see. Thanks for the replies. So it is taking my typical level of activity into account, and only activitie sI go out of my way to burn extra calories should be logged. That makes sense. It's abit of a pain as my days can vary so much. Today, my pedometer says I walked 18,922 steps, 10.418 miles, over a time of 6:32:37, at an average speed of 1.7 mph, and burned 1688.7 calories. That sounds like a lot to me honestly, even though I currently weigh 241, so I am going to try some other pedometers. But anyway, I have had other days where it has said I only went 4 miles. I guess it's good that it's just averaging things for me in the background.

    Thanks again for the replies. I believe I am set to lightly active, as I do not do all of those actiities Ilisted extensively each day. I suppos eI still have to get used to the new lifestyle is all.

    IF you had a fitbit or similar it would automatically toss all of that data through it's science and adjust your calorie requirements as needed.
  • hearthemelody
    hearthemelody Posts: 1,025 Member
    IF you had a fitbit or similar it would automatically toss all of that data through it's science and adjust your calorie requirements as needed.

    I agree, a Fitbit would be a wise investment for you.
  • wayne12182
    wayne12182 Posts: 10
    I will look into this Fitbit thing.

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