Unsure of Activity Level?

Katie0174

Hi everyone!

I'm fairly new here and I just have a question about my activity level; I've just spent so long looking through the forums trying to find an answer but I couldn't

So, I'm a part time house cleaner: I clean 3 days a week for no more than 6 hours total each of those days, usually around 5 hours. I put my activity level as sedentary because on the days that I don't work I seriously just sit around and like read all day. So 3 days cleaning and 4 days sitting. This house cleaning is serious too, lol, big houses, up and down stairs, cleaning the baseboards...everything! I've only been doing this job since about the middle of October so it wasn't too much a part of my life before this either.

I've been logging the calories I burn when I'm cleaning and I've lost 3 lbs so far in like 2 weeks, but I'm just really not sure if I should keep my activity level as sedentary or change it to lightly active. I'm worried that it's going to hinder my progress somehow

If anyone can give some insight I would appreciate it so much!!

UponThisRock

Keep in mind that calorie goals are just an estimation. You should be tracking progress and adjusting things to your real world experience

Kirsty_UK

Keep in mind that calorie goals are just an estimation. You should be tracking progress and adjusting things to your real world experience

sound advice - but if it was me, if your activity varies a lot day to day, I'd stick with the most inactive setting and log exercise on top of that

CMmrsfloyd

It sounds like you're pretty active 3 days out of the week. If it were me, I'd probably consider setting my profile to 'lightly active' and going by those recommendations for a week or two. If you're seeing the results you'd expect by following those recommendations, then it's probably a fairly accurate estimation of your activity level. If you don't see the results that you should see if it's accurate, you can then tweak the setting in whichever direction seems appropriate.

Or like pp suggested you could leave it as 'sedentary' and then just log the hours spent cleaning in your exercise diary. That will give you extra calories for the exercise on those specific days.

onehotgirl

I'm in a similar boat to you, I work on my feet but only part time at about 25 hours per week, then I generally have a rather inactive weekend. I ended up putting lightly active and so far I've lost 4kg (8lbs) in four weeks, eating around 1400-1500 cal a day. I figure I could bump my activity level to moderate as I am losing double what mfp predicts. So I think I have my activity level wrong, but hey I'll go with it as 1) I'm losing 2) I'm not really hungry so don't want to bump cals up.

Katie0174

Thanks guys, I think I'm going to try keeping it at sedentary for now and just add some of the calories from the days I work.

I'm afraid that if I put it up to lightly active then I'll just be eating more and not losing it because when I say I sit around, I seriously sit around I'm not active at all unless I work or go to work out. Once I get more used to working out and everything then I'll probably change it, I guess.