Activity level? Desk job but working out hardcore.

Ebwash89

I work in an office and I'm sitting down majority of the day and when at home I am relaxing, laying in the bed if I'm not working out so I always had my activity level set to secondary regardless of how much I worked out. Now that I've hit a wall people are telling me that I need to increase my calorie or activity level to get pass my plateau. I try to workout at least 3 days out of the week some time I'll do 5. So should I reset my activity level to lightly active and eat more(at my bmr)?

Virginia90

Are you eating your exercise calories back? Do you have a heart rate monitor to make sure your exercise calories are accurate? MFP doesn't consider exercise into your activity level, but instead you add it as extra. Also, how long have you been stalled, and what is your weekly goal? I see you are fairly close to your GW, so your weekly goal should probably be 1 pound or even .5lbs a week.

bigbeardiver

I had the same quesiton about the MFP activity level. Yes I worked a desk job and sit most of the day. So I should pick inactive. But I do 7 days of intense training so which should it be. I think the basis of the question is to determine how many calories you burn based on your non-exercise activity.

Helloitsdan

You need to consistently boost metabolism by eating the correct amount of food daily.

Know your TDEE, BMR and body fat % and all is possible!

Google Fat to Fit Radio Tools and do Military body fat calc then BMR tool.
Eat well and metabolism boosts.

Eat poorly and...

taso42

Just a data point here... I have a similar lifestyle as you - desk job and pretty sedentary lifestyle other than my workouts. When I was losing weight I had to set my activity level to "Very Active" in order to coax MFP to give me the right numbers. I'm currently set to "Active"; for whatever reason, something changed.

So even though in theory you and I should both choose "Sedentary", that isn't always the case. You have to play around and with trial and error you will find the right numbers.

Ebwash89

Are you eating your exercise calories back? Do you have a heart rate monitor to make sure your exercise calories are accurate? MFP doesn't consider exercise into your activity level, but instead you add it as extra. Also, how long have you been stalled, and what is your weekly goal? I see you are fairly close to your GW, so your weekly goal should probably be 1 pound or even .5lbs a week.

I never ate my exercise calories back before but Im gonna start. I have a heart rate monitor now. I ended up chaning my goal to 1 pound a week and up my activity so I'm at about 1400 calories a day without exercise. How long does it take to see a change and the scale going down again?