Bartending excercise?

chickybuns

If you are set as active you can always count an extra 300-400 calories for it. I think cleaning the house counts, it's not an "exercise" but it burns calories. I have a bodybugg and days where I have done deep cleaning for several hours I burn at least an extra 500 calories without working out.

KLo924

As a former bartender who weighed considerably less when I had that job, I think you should log something (maybe cleaning for half the time or something), or change your settings just for those days to active (change them that day and change them back the next day). I'm in the east most of your exercise calories camp, and wouldn't want you to not get enough nutrition to compensate for the walking, stacking beer and glasses, slugging kegs around, etc.

Good luck! :drinker:

PrincessKittenpants

In you life style settings you can set it to very active to very seditary. This is your best option. counting house cleaning is just ridiculous and only a practice of people who want to cheat as much as they can on their diets.

I would disagree with this. I count house cleaning since it is calories I burn. I clean my house top to bottom once a week and I do sweat from running up and down stairs and scrubbing my floors. This is exercise. I don't however, eat back these calories. This is my decision not to count them and I do not feel as though this is cheating.

RoanneRed

If you bartend regularly then set your activity to lightly active instead of sedentary and then don't log the bartending as calories burned. BUT if you only bartend occassionally, once a week or less, then log the calories burned since its not daily activity and it is exercise. Maybe log it as walking for the 8 hour shift?

My rule of thumb for logging exercise is this.... 1) Did I do this regular activity prior to joining MFP and trying to lose weight? If yes, then I don't log it because it didn't help me lose weight before, it won't now. This would be stuff like mowing the yard, cleaning house, etc. 2) How often do I perform this activity? If I only do it a handful of times over the course of months or a year then i will log it. For example, splitting wood for the fireplace. I only do this a few weekends a year and its a huge calorie burn. I log it.

If I were you, since the bartending is only weekly or so I would leave the activity level as sedentary and log the bartending as calories burned. But i would just make a guesstimate on the low side because while its a lot of work and moving around there is also a lot of just standing without your heart rate elevated very high

I agree with this - I would always err on the side of caution when logging it so walking at a slow pace and then you've got a little extra if it's busier/faster.

RoanneRed

In you life style settings you can set it to very active to very seditary. This is your best option. counting house cleaning is just ridiculous and only a practice of people who want to cheat as much as they can on their diets.

I would disagree with this. I count house cleaning since it is calories I burn. I clean my house top to bottom once a week and I do sweat from running up and down stairs and scrubbing my floors. This is exercise. I don't however, eat back these calories. This is my decision not to count them and I do not feel as though this is cheating.

I don't see it as cheating either - I don't log 'washing the dishes' or regular meal preparation but on a day when I clean the whole house or spend 2 hours making batches of food then that's not part of my regular activity level and is worth logging.

kristelpoole

I logged it when I was bartending. If it was a slow night, I might not worry about it, but on busy nights? You'd better believe it. It can be a workout, depending on where you work and what time of day/night.

alexiaans

So happy to see this post!

I am a bartender, and I bartend twice a week. It can get to be VERY strenuous, especially on busy nights. I was curious about logging it and whether it was worth it or not, so I tried to track it different ways. I wore a pedometer one night, a heart-rate monitor another night. Both nights I found that I burned a substantial amount of calories or took a lot of steps, almost as many steps as I take on one of my runs. So I definitely count it. I usually just use the option "cooking" when I log it. That activity doesn't particularly give you a lot of calories burned, but it does give you some for the effort you are putting in.

IMO, if my back, legs, arms are killing me at the end of the night, I did some work! That's just me though. lol

audreanna76

But cleaning the house is?

Actually, no.
People who log that in as "exercise" are usually wishful thinkers on a fast track to failure.

I think it's hilarious when I see people log in exercise. It's like "Are you freaking kidding me"?

darlilama

But cleaning the house is?

Actually, no.
People who log that in as "exercise" are usually wishful thinkers on a fast track to failure.

I log housecleaning if it is especially rigorous and not something I normally do. Dusting...no way...attacking the baseboards, floor, tub, etc with a toothbrush like a maniac...yeah. But I only log 1/2 the time and do the light setting, and I still work out anyway.

^^ I'm with her. I usually log half the time and I work up a sweat cleaning my house. What, maybe you guys never clean house?

addisondisease

shut up and let the thread die

missikay1970

If you bartend regularly then set your activity to lightly active instead of sedentary and then don't log the bartending as calories burned. BUT if you only bartend occassionally, once a week or less, then log the calories burned since its not daily activity and it is exercise. Maybe log it as walking for the 8 hour shift?

My rule of thumb for logging exercise is this.... 1) Did I do this regular activity prior to joining MFP and trying to lose weight? If yes, then I don't log it because it didn't help me lose weight before, it won't now. This would be stuff like mowing the yard, cleaning house, etc. 2) How often do I perform this activity? If I only do it a handful of times over the course of months or a year then i will log it. For example, splitting wood for the fireplace. I only do this a few weekends a year and its a huge calorie burn. I log it.

If I were you, since the bartending is only weekly or so I would leave the activity level as sedentary and log the bartending as calories burned. But i would just make a guesstimate on the low side because while its a lot of work and moving around there is also a lot of just standing without your heart rate elevated very high

i love your rules for determining what to calculate. excellent!

LittleMissDoll

shut up and let the thread die

you are kind of an *kitten*, i hope you know that

lbetancourt

But cleaning the house is?

Actually, no.
People who log that in as "exercise" are usually wishful thinkers on a fast track to failure.

that's what I figured. So, I stopped cleaning.

audreanna76

But cleaning the house is?

Actually, no.
People who log that in as "exercise" are usually wishful thinkers on a fast track to failure.

that's what I figured. So, I stopped cleaning.

LOL!

darlilama

But cleaning the house is?

Actually, no.
People who log that in as "exercise" are usually wishful thinkers on a fast track to failure.

that's what I figured. So, I stopped cleaning.

OMG... too funny. Silly me, I kept cleaning and fast-track failed by losing 35 lbs... sh**, who knew?

tameko2

In you life style settings you can set it to very active to very seditary. This is your best option. counting house cleaning is just ridiculous and only a practice of people who want to cheat as much as they can on their diets.

I would disagree with this. I count house cleaning since it is calories I burn. I clean my house top to bottom once a week and I do sweat from running up and down stairs and scrubbing my floors. This is exercise. I don't however, eat back these calories. This is my decision not to count them and I do not feel as though this is cheating.

I don't see it as cheating either - I don't log 'washing the dishes' or regular meal preparation but on a day when I clean the whole house or spend 2 hours making batches of food then that's not part of my regular activity level and is worth logging.

exactly

FFS you people have no understanding of how this site works. You can either 1) set your TDEE setting to what you do on a NORMAL day (in my case, sit on my butt) or 2) set your TDEE to an average of what you do over the course of your week, so if you sit on your butt 2 days a week, clean vigorously for 2 hours for 2 days a week, and do some standing and walking the other 3 days a week you could just call it "lightly active" and not log any of that as additional activity.

It all depends on how YOU set up YOUR profile.

If you chose option 2 then yes, you should never log things like cleaning.

if you chose option 1 you should log EVERYTHING outside your 'norm' that takes longer than 10-15 minutes because if you don't you aren't accurately representing your deficit.

For example if I spend most of my days on my butt (I do) I would put myself in as sedentary, but if I go on a massive house cleaning spree and spend 5 hours scrubbing my house, sedentary calories would not be at ALL representative of how much I burned that day.

Some people prefer taking an average, some people prefer adding everything back in and managing their calories on a day to day basis. It is ONLY sabotaging your weight loss if you log things that you ALREADY included in your activity calculation.

Sheesh.

WifeNMama

I'm planning on vacuuming and rearranging the entire downstairs, which involves moving furniture, a full sized fridge and my husband's giant base amp that I'm pretty sure weighs as much as I do. It'll probably take a couple of hours, and will exhaust me more than my weights and cycle of tabatas did this afternoon. But I better not count it as exercise though, heaven forbid I offend the fitness experts on this site with productive exercise.
Log it but make sure you're paying attention to your heart rate. If it's going hard, that's exercise, if you're not really moving much, then don't. Just try to be as accurate as possible and maybe log it as cleaning, light/moderate effort.