What do you do for a living?

amarie35

I am at the time unemployed. But I am a mom of 3 and I am pretty much constantly doing something. Whether it's cleaning, cooking, or playing with the kids, I'm doing it 24/7.

Up till now, I've just been switching my daily activity levels. One week I may set it for sedentary & just add each thing I do under my exercises (cleaning, cooking, etc). The following week, I'll set it to light active and only log when I actually exercise. This week, I decided to set it to active because my husband thought I wasn't taking in enough calories with all of the running I've been doing. I don't have a HRM and he thinks I'm burning more calories than what MFP says I do.

How accurate do you think MFP is? I plan on buying a HRM soon but in the mean time, help me decide if I should leave it set on active or change it back to light active. What do you do for a living & what is your daily activity level set to?

craft338

i work with kids for about 6 hours a day.

i hit a month long plateau a while back even though i was being really strict with eating and exercise. i wore my HRM all day a bunch of times and it turns out i burn close to 3000 calories a day when i'm working! i raised my daily activity level and my calories from 1300 to 1650 and i started losing again right away.

if you have 3 kids, you're definitely a little more active than you think, especially with all you regular work outs. all the "tie my shoes" and "pick me up"'s start to add up!

i would stick with the higher activity level and see how that goes for a while.

FabulousFifty

Teacher here. Yes, get that HRM. I don't think the cals burned are very accurate for me...the HRM shows lower amount. I try to burn around 300/day 4 -6 days a week. Sometimes it is more, sometimes less.

Have an awesome week! :flowerforyou:

pjrisher

I've had issues with this too. I'm a chef and I have it set to "lightly active" even though I think I should mark "active" sometimes. I'm just trying to figure it out day by day to determine how many calories to eat.

GDWoodruff

I am a manager in a Theme Park in eastern PA. My days are usually spent on my feet, but when i'm at my desk, I'm sitting for quite awhile.

loriannmartin

well i do not work and have mine set to sedentary... i just bought a hrm... mfp is over on calories burned for me.... i cant do many exercises so mine is mostly walking, some home calisthenics if my back can handle it. good luck to you
lori

raychybabe

I'm a "criminal justice drug worker" - so although I'm office based, there's never a quiet day and I'm constantly up and down stairs going to see clients, get files, photocopy etc and I walk to the shop on my lunch so I try to be pretty active!

We have a HUGE office clean the other day (cleaning, archiving files, shredding, vacuuming, dusting, sorting etc) from 8.30am-12pm so that burned a fair few cals! (we'll see how long the office stays tidy!)

blink1021

I work a fulltime desk job where I sit most days for 40 hours per week. I am also in school and that is about 20 hours per week. Then I have a 7 year old and a husband that I have to make time for. I can be stretched pretty thin. I try to work out as much as possible although most days I can only get in 40 minutes so I try to make sure it is intense I feel like I too sometimes may burn more than what MFP says I do because I see what my friends post and I am doing the same exercises. So I have decided to buy an HRM just to make sure it is accurate and to make myself feel better too. Instead of always feeling like I am not doing enough. My husband trys to be nice by saying to me that my legs look thinner or that he can tell I am losing inches even though I rarely see the scale move. Have a great weekend.

raychybabe

I am a manager in a Theme Park in eastern PA. My days are usually spent on my feet, but when i'm at my desk, I'm sitting for quite awhile.

that sounds like an awesome job!

georgiag111

MOST always says is that all but Im a stay at home to my 6 children , my husband travels M-Fri so only home on weekends so I play the mom and dad roll 24 hours a day 5 days a week with no help. My kids are (almost 13, Almost 9, 6 , almost 5, 17 months and 4 months of age)

ChRiStA_1983

I'm a gr. 5/6 teacher, so I do a LOT of walking around in a day...Plus, my classroom is on the third (top) floor of an old building, and the office, washrooms, staff room, and outdoor play yards where I have lunch duty are all on the main level....So I do a fair amount of walking stairs in a day!

I set my activity level to "lightly active", though, and then log only exercise that is above and beyond the daily physical activity of my job.

loriannmartin

are you at hershey ? we were there 2 years ago... so much fun loved it...

nicothepotato

I've had issues with this too. I'm a chef and I have it set to "lightly active" even though I think I should mark "active" sometimes. I'm just trying to figure it out day by day to determine how many calories to eat.

Exactly. I'm a cook and don't really know whether I'm active or lightly active.

sbwood888

I am a nurse and I work in an eye tissue bank. Donate Life!

barbiex3

i'm a full time student (including in the summer) =] !

melsinct

Government contractor who is either sitting at a desk all day or running through airports. Needless to say, activity level changes day to day.

Lovelystrumpet

Full time student of Classics, and part time freelance journalist and blogger

My activity level during my studying is sedentary to the max, so I try and do mini workouts at home throughout the day, and used to go to my Uni gym 3 times a week until they increased the membership price and now there's no way I can afford it with my rent. Occasionally do classes, like Pilates and Zumba, and go walking most days for an hour upwards. At the moment revision is making it hard to be motivated to do anything at all though.

When I'm home in summer at my boyfriends house and my parents house, I'm going to up my exercise level

JClairron

I'm a hoeschooling mom of a 9 (almost 10) year old, 5 year old, and 1 year old. I set my activity level to sedentary and my weight loss goal to 2lbs a week and MFP gave me a 1300 calorie per day goal. I was fine on that, unless I got up and did *anything*. If I even switched the laundry I would get shaky and light headed. So then I bumped it to 1.5lbs per week and it gave me 1600 calories per day. I'm doing a bit better on that, still feeling shakey and light headed sometimmes, but I'm losing 1.5lbs per week.

So, your post got me thinking about my activity level. I don't *feel* like I'm active - homeschooling requires a lot of sitting on my rear - but maybe I'm more active than I realize? I think I definitely need a HRM stat!

teanabean

I'm a nurse. I work 3, 12 hour shifts a week. Those days I am very active, only sitting for maybe 2 hours a day.

The other 4 days of the week I am home with the kids. I have 3.

TrainingWithTonya

I'm a personal trainer, group exercise instructor, full time student, wife, & mom. I'm on my feet most of the day except when I'm actually seated in my classes, but since I'm a student of exercise science, there's not much of that as a lot of our stuff is hands on. So, basically, I sit down for 10 minutes here and there to get on the computer between classes and clients and when I do have a day off at home, I'm up from studying every few minutes to work on something around the house. I list my activity as extremely active and I don't count anything I do around the house or training clients as exercise. The only exercise you will see on my logs are my actual workouts where I put in my ear buds and ignore the world for a little while. LOL It would just be too tedious and time consuming to log everything everyday.