Logging 'cleaning' and 'shopping' cals burned etc

asyouseefit

Working out is, after all, just a way of artificially recreating physical activity people people used to get during their workday (working in the fields, in the mine...). So, if you break a sweat of feel your HR getting higher, log it. Just don't overestimate calories burnt!

MacMadame

When I started I'd log stuff like that... not cleaning but maybe 5 minutes of stairs. But I pretty quickly stopped doing that and consider those calories already counted in my daily allotment.

I also am completely mystified by the calorie counts I see for many exercises in my news feed. In particular, I see people logging that they burned 100-200 calories per 1 mile of walking and that is just not possible. How many calories walking burns has been studied to DEATH and we know it's around 50 net calories. That is, 50 more than if you were sitting around watching tv, which also burns calories but those are part of your daily allotment. It may vary by person by 5-10 but not by 50-100!

I think people don't realize that they need to subtract off the calories for their BMR from their exercise as those calories are already counted. MFP gives you the total calories burned (and even those seem high to me for many exercises) but your BMR/RMR calories are already accounted for and have to be subtracted off to get net calories.

spookiewon

That's exactly the point. Your bar is no higher than mine. You suggest my opinion that cleaning and shopping are exercise is ridiculous, and I assure you that your belief that it is not is just as ridiculous. You're offended by the exact same wording you used to describe other people's opinions. You were supposed to be offended. It was offensive when you said it, and that's what's wrong with that.

Calling something ridiculous IS judging.

I agree with you completely. And it has nothing to do with the thickness of my skin. I don't know about anyone else, but I can spot *kitten* behavior without being personally offended. It's totally doable.

Next someone will start a thread about "How can you log 'jogging' as exercise? I mean, I run for 12 miles at a 6 min pace, and THAT's a workout. But pfft...jogging? Get real."

Do what works for you and leave everyone else alone. OP: you apparently know what works for you, so what opinion or advice are you really looking for? Either cheer your friends on or dont. It's totally up to you.

I know. In fact, my favorite xkcd is http://xkcd.com/386/ "Duty Calls" (and don't miss the mouseover text--just hover over the comic) because it's so true for so many of us. It just gets me. And clearly I'm not alone. Good for you for letting it roll off.

shawneez75

I wear a Fitbit and it logs everything. Just cleaning my home it says I walked 10,798 steps if you do the math that's 5 miles. I burn about 804 calories in 2 hours once a week.... This should get logged however I have not listed cleaning since some fitness ding dong started telling me I would never lose weight that way. I bought a monitor Fitbit and know he was wrong. I agree with others that say you have no idea if we have monitors or not and should mind your own business.
This site is to help people not hold us back. For those that think cleaning should not be logged don't and for those that do then let them. If we are losing weight cleaning and shopping then give us praise cause weare doing what works for us.

I am proud of those that get out there and walk even if it's 2 miles an hour. For some this is hard and I applaud you for making the change. If your cleaning and not on the couch eating yay for you. If your thin and have no need to log any of your cleaning or walking calories good for you. To each his own. Let MFP do what it was meant to do..... Change peoples lives!

ShapeUpSidney

I think people don't realize that they need to subtract off the calories for their BMR from their exercise as those calories are already counted. MFP gives you the total calories burned (and even those seem high to me for many exercises) but your BMR/RMR calories are already accounted for and have to be subtracted off to get net calories.

The net calorie issue always bugs me about MFP. Sometimes I do a mental adjustment at the end of the day (based on minutes I've exercised) but most times I just let it go.

If I could find a way to write a plug in to this nutritional database, I'd track all my stuff our analytical software instead...then these adjustments will be EASY

spookiewon

I wear a Fitbit and it logs everything. Just cleaning my home it says I walked 10,798 steps if you do the math that's 5 miles. I burn about 804 calories in 2 hours once a week.... This should get logged however I have not listed cleaning since some fitness ding dong started telling me I would never lose weight that way. I bought a monitor Fitbit and know he was wrong. I agree with others that say you have no idea if we have monitors or not and should mind your own business.
This site is to help people not hold us back. For those that think cleaning should not be logged don't and for those that do then let them. If we are losing weight cleaning and shopping then give us praise cause weare doing what works for us.

I am proud of those that get out there and walk even if it's 2 miles an hour. For some this is hard and I applaud you for making the change. If your cleaning and not on the couch eating yay for you. If your thin and have no need to log any of your cleaning or walking calories good for you. To each his own. Let MFP do what it was meant to do..... Change peoples lives!

I wore a Fitbit for almost two years, but kept losing them. After buying three in that time, I've switched to an UP band. They both seem to log the same amounts, so I'm confident of the accuracy, though the format is different and I'm still getting used to it. I do love UP's alarm feature. You set a time that you don't want to sedentary longer than, and if you don't do some pretty significant moving in that time it vibrates to get you up and moving. I have mine set to keep me from sitting at my desk longer than an hour at a time at work, and just walking to another office on my floor won't count as enough exercise to keep it from alarming. It does increase my activity at a time when I might unconsciously not notice otherwise. It also monitors your sleep and wakes you at the lightest sleep moment within a half hour of your set time. Both of these features can be shut off if you don't like them. The downside is it's not standalone, and you MUST have an iPod Touch, iPad, or iPhone to use it. I use the UP app, just as I used Fitbit's website, to log everything but calories. MFP just has the most awesome database, so I use that instead. But I log activity at on the UP's software, like I did with Fitbit.

My Fitbit and my UP certainly do not agree with MFP's calories burned amounts. They are considerably lower than MFP's calories burned, often less than half, and I use the numbers I get from UP, not the MFP numbers. These tools are so great!

Reyalvarado

Same here - I work in an office, and sit all day, so I do log cleaning and shopping time. I usually underestimate it a bit, and definitely log it as "Walking Slow 2 MPH", and it usually only amounts to about 15-20 mins a day at most. I even log time spent standing (this burns 50 cals more an hour) at social events and the like.

I think the key is that I calculate my BMR based on "Sedentary" which assumes sitting around most of the day. If you are already calculating based on "Light activity" or more, then it's probably not a good idea to log these kinds of activities.

tjpinch

I log anything above ordinary. Meaning, I don't log doing the dishes. I do log the 'OMG I have company coming over in three hours and my house is a mess' cleaning. If the baby is particularly fussy and I spend most of the day pacing the house bouncing him, I also log that. I have my activity set at sedentary.

spookiewon

According to Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic, it's more important to move than that it be "planned exercise" in weight loss. He stresses that his studies show that NEAT, or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, is the best way to lose weight or avoid gaining weight even if you eat too much. He says, "When we perform studies to examine how normal people walk as they go about their business during the day, we find that the velocity is about 1.1 mph. Our research suggests that weaving this kind of walking throughout the day can help overweight people shed far more pounds than they ever dreamed possible." Workouts are not the only way, or even necessarily the best way for some people, to lose weight. If they feel good to you, by all means do them, but anything that isn't sitting on the couch watching TV COUNTS, and it's all many people with chronic pain can manage. It IS judgmental and counterproductive to suggest that counting NEAT is ridiculous.

Now, if you're an endocrinologist with an organization of equal stature to the Mayo Clinic, you can tell me that your opinion is that it's ridiculous for me to count calories burned in everyday activities like shopping and cleaning. Otherwise your opinion is no better than mine, and it's perfectly sound to count these calories.

CMmrsfloyd

I logged my cleaning for quite awhile, I wore my HRM while I did long stretches of cleaning, my HR was up 'in the zone' for the majority of the time b/c I was intentionally TRYING to get a workout out of it, and believe it or not I usually burned more calories (per my Polar FT4) than what MFP estimated for 'cleaning, vigorous effort'. Just b/c YOU don't get a workout out of cleaning doesn't mean no one does. I assure you, purposely cleaning like a maniac and lugging my vaccum cleaner up the stairs, stopping on every stair to scrub the hell out of it with the vaccum hose, scrubbing bathtubs on my hands and knees, etc, got ME a workout. I ate those exercise calories like they were going out of style, and guess what? I lost weight. I'm set to 'sedentary' and I didn't count walking around the house or whatever, but if I knew I was about to do some heavy cleaning I strapped on my HRM and went for it. And if I ever did a big chunk of cleaning where I wasn't wearing my HRM, I still logged it with my best estimation. If I felt like I was working up to par with one of my heavier cleaning sessions, I logged it as such, if I knew that I wasn't going as hard as I usually did then I would go with the MFP estimate for cleaning but underestimate the time spent so as not to overestimate the calories. I don't log it as much as I used to b/c I don't do those big intentionally active spurts anymore, I do smaller bursts of cleaning here and there and then set aside time for walking/running/30dayshred, and since I need big chunks of time for those activities I don't normally set aside big chunks of time for marathon cleaning anymore. On the rare days that I DO have to clean for over an hour straight and end up with no time to do a structured workout, I will still log it.

If it works for you, do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. If you don't like somebody else doing it, tough, they are adults and they can choose how they want to account for their calories in whatever way works for them. If they get stuck in a plateau and ask for advice, by all means give them some suggestions, but otherwise let them handle their own business.

stormieweather

I wear a Fitbit and track every day's calories. I do not log cleaning or my normal, weekly shopping trips. However, I took a vacation day last Friday and spent more than 6 hours walking the mall. According to my Fibit, I walked 5 miles during that time and burned 450 calories. I logged 2 hours. My daily calories were much higher than normal, so yeah...I logged them. But I'm not trying to lose weight anymore, just tracking what I eat and do.

AshDHart

It really depends on the individual and where they are coming from. I've been on oxygen since March and was very sedentary when I started here. Pulling everything off the bed and remaking it could take me 15 minutes and my heart rate would hit in the 140's. Tell me I wasn't burning more calories compared to sitting on my butt on the couch. :happy: Cleaning was not part of my routine as I couldn't stand up long enough to load the dishwasher. Heck, this year is the first time in I don't know how long that I have actually done a load. Seeing how all those "little" activities calories added up motivated me to do as many of those "little" things everyday.

I have lost 77 lbs since March so I think it's been working. As I get more active I don't count as much as it becomes less of a workout for me and more of a daily routine.

I do have a question for those that only log planned activities and not general stuff like a walk to view the lights. If I don't plan to run but find myself in the middle of a zombie outbreak and have to run my butt off do those calories not count? :bigsmile:

stormieweather

It really depends on the individual and where they are coming from. I've been on oxygen since March and was very sedentary when I started here. Pulling everything off the bed and remaking it could take me 15 minutes and my heart rate would hit in the 140's. Tell me I wasn't burning more calories compared to sitting on my butt on the couch. :happy: Cleaning was not part of my routine as I couldn't stand up long enough to load the dishwasher. Heck, this year is the first time in I don't know how long that I have actually done a load. Seeing how all those "little" activities calories added up motivated me to do as many of those "little" things everyday.

I have lost 77 lbs since March so I think it's been working. As I get more active I don't count as much as it becomes less of a workout for me and more of a daily routine.

I do have a question for those that only log planned activities and not general stuff like a walk to view the lights. If I don't plan to run but find myself in the middle of a zombie outbreak and have to run my butt off do those calories not count? :bigsmile:

Only if you survive!!

chyloet

Well, my understanding is that the calorie requirement is based on the minimum calories that you would burn just breathing so, technically ANYTHING you do CAN be tracked. So, I think that the question is ... SHOULD or DO you?

I personally don't track anything that isn't above and beyond normal daily activitiy. That being said, I wear my HRM on my "big cleaning" days (ie, days that I vacuum, dust, mop, laundry, scour bathrooms, etc) and track them. However, I walk my dogs every night after work and I do not track that, I just don't feel that I get my heart rate up enough to warrant it. I guess that's how I decide wether or not I will track it as exercise.

Jebo200

What about walking the dog...?

msbobbitx

I log it if it's more than 30 minutes or if I feel winded. With my sedentary lifestyle and size, I'm definitely burining calories.

Contrarian

I don't clean. :happy:

Barefoot_and_Beautiful

I work as a housekeeper at a hotel and do log my hours at work as exercise, more often out of curiousity to see what I burned. I often work 5+ hours (I know, not a heck of a lot, but when you break it down to a half hour per room, sometimes longer, it makes for a long day). I count it as light to moderate cleaning even though most of it is probably considered 'vigorous' what with cleaning bathrooms, mopping, and vacuuming. I run the stairs instead of taking the elevator when I can and log that as well. I don't even try to eat back all those calories. I try to stick as closely to my 1200 calorie per day allowance, although sometimes I'm over. I don't log shopping, although I probably could, I park waaay in the back of the parking lot so that I have to 'hike' to the store and then back to my car, but I never time how long it takes me to get in, get what I need, and get back to my car.

amoffatt

If Im gonna log every calorie I put in my mouth, then Im gonna log every calorie I burn.....plain and simple!!!!

I love this so true! Hard core people with weight loss are big on logging every thing that touches their tounge, so why not those few calories burned through cleaning house....Makes sense. I have a split level, so to do laundry is at least a "million" trips up and down two sets of stairs a day, that has to count for something. I load, unload and stack hay but have a hard time finding a way to log it unless I do it under house cleaning or that kind of work or not at all, but then how will I know exactly what I am burning especially if I need to know exactly what I am eating....:bigsmile:

Raclex

A calorie burnt is a calorie burnt.

Do you log sex :blushing: ? Hey, at the end of the day, it all adds up!

Yes! Not often enough, though!

I can't find that on the list! I have considered logging it in as "wrestling", but I'm not sure how accurate that is! It's not like either of us are trying to get out of the hold....:bigsmile: (and neither of us has ever "lost" a bout! )

Howl out loud... that was funny! But you're right, I've yet to find it... What would we log it under anyways? perhaps I should start a new thread?! LOL