life calories....

kelsully

I typically only add in my "exercise calories" but our basement flooded once and I spent the day making trips up and down the basement stairs carrying loads of wet stuff...that day I counted vigerous cleaning...Also I never counted the days when I cut the grass and pulled a weed or two but when I prepped a whole vegetable garden using rakes and shovels etc instead of gas powered tools I counted my gardening. My mom on the other hand, is extremely overweight. If she were to push my lawn mower for 45 minutes it would be more working out than she gets in a month...she should count it...When she does a power cleaning of her house...the whole big house and she is winded when she is done...heck yeah she should count it...I think it is all relative to how much you do and what a said activity is in comparison to what you usually do on a daily basis.

SouthernBell86

Here's the thing, if you have selected Sedentary as your lifestyle, MFP DOES NOT calculate those "life calories" and I know most of my MFP friends are set to sedentary. It makes sense that if you clean once a week, that you should count those calories, because MFP has not accounted for them.

If you have selected Active, then all of your daily chores are included already.

I guess the main thing is that some of us are really not sure what lifestyle we are, it varies from day to day. We choose sedentary so that we can be honest with all those things we do from day to day, and not claim the "Active" lifestyle calories we may or may not have burned.

I think this is really all in your perspective. Because we all use MFP differently it can be confusing why one person is adding exercise calories for cooking or cleaning, the best thing is to just be honest with yourself. You don't want to eat too few calories anymore than you want to eat too many.

Beth720

I do count doing laundry for me simply because I have to walk to and from the laundromat pulling my laundry cart. It's not an every day activity - more like an every other week activity. I don't count the time I'm hanging out waiting for the laundry to get done, but getting there and getting home (stairs and multiple blocks are involved) I do count.

Texsox

The greater message in this challenge is to make certain we are not "cheating" ourselves. If you come here looking for support and a little nudge, this challenge may help *you*. Others may not need it. I never really thought about claiming mine, but I could see a day spent cleaning the garage or rebuilding a home, (I'm amazed one person did all that in one day), I may count it if only to keep from showing a non losing day. Silly but my streak is important to me and I want it to be accurate. Now I will log the nthree calories I burned while typing this lol

elainegsd

Based on the logic here, I'd have to subtract calories from my daily limit because I hire a gardener to take care of my yard... Yard work calories are part of my 1200 calories per day, right?