MFP Acitivity Level Categories

KathyEarhart

I'm just curious if MFP tends to under or overestimate how much each lifestyle burns. I have mine set at lightly active. I don't hold a 'formal job' at least not one that pays me! I'm a stay at home mom to 3, 4 months (not breastfeeding- so no extra calories burned there), 5 and 8 years. When reading the descriptions, I see a nurse as lightly active, to me they are pretty active, so I picked that one to calculate for all the mom duties I have. I generally do a top to bottom clean of my house twice a week (3,000 sq. ft. so a lot to clean), run kids to and from activities, lots of lifting baby and God only knows how many times a day I do the stairs- I live in the stairmaster! I also do my fair share of sedentary activities, bookeeping for my husband's company, Facebook addict, feeding baby, cuddling kiddos and so on. I'm not really doing any formal exercise with my dieting. I know me and I know if I try to change too much too quickly that I'll quit, so for me I want to be a bit closer to my goal and then add exercise, so if/ when I gain I won't get discouraged and quit.

So now to the problem, I was doing 1,300 or so calories a day and hit a wall and was losing and gaining the same pound or two weekly. Last Monday I got very frustrated with this and upped my calories to 1,580. Still frustrated and annoyed, I really blew it the last week and a half (junk food, eating out, soft drinks, and so on). I still tracked the things and was clocking around 2,000 calories a day. I reluctantly weighed this morning and have lost 2.3 lbs since last Monday. I was positive it was going to move up not down. So now, I'm wondering if I was really only burning that low of number of calories, hence 'starving' my body. Curious what everyone's experiences are with this.

Rae6503

Set yourself to lightly active and lower your weekly goal to 0.5lbs per week. Try it. See what happens. Why do the "hard" diet when the "easy" one works too?

brianna626

Maybe, but you may have been at a plateau. I have heard of people hitting plateau's and either take a break exercising or eat high calories for a few days to get their metabolism moving. I feel like you kind of just have to do a trial and error and see what works for your body.

KathyEarhart

Set yourself to lightly active and lower your weekly goal to 0.5lbs per week. Try it. See what happens. Why do the "hard" diet when the "easy" one works too?

That's what I did a week and a half ago, but I had eaten even more than that recommended and still lost Not sure if it was just a plateau or not.