am i doing this right...?

jbug5j

okay this is going to be kind of long so i apologise in advance for any spelling or grammar errors.

I am a 24 year old female. Im 5'1'' and weight 165. My goal is 130lbs. I just started using MFP about a month ago and im not sure im doing this right. Here are my questions.

1. in the fitness profile i filled out i filled out my age and weight and everything easy. Then i got to "How would you describe your normal daily activities?" I work as a cashier at a gas station 3-5 times a week for 4-7 hours at a time. The rest of the time im relaxing on my couch. i do try to bike for 45 min on my days off.. im a very home body person. im NOT just eating and eating, i just enjoy my litte blanket cacoon and video games lol. I entered Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. nurse, salesman), is this right?

2. when i do work i have been getting home and logging my "excersise" from working. the reason is you burn callories from standing. how i enter this is "walking 2mph slow" for half the time i work. so if i work 7 hours thats 420 min, i would enter 210 min. My question to this is should i be entering this at all?

3. I have a stationary bike and i try to use it on my days off, 2-4 days a week. I normally pick a show on netflix and bike the whole show, about 43 min. Im not sure if im entering this right. i average 15 miles an hour and i dont have any resistance on the pedals. i will add some just not yet. there was no speed listed on stationary so i looked at regular biking and saw it said 15 mph was in the vigurous catagory so i enter "stationary bike vigurous" My bike has a callorie counter as well and its always half if not 1/3 of what MFP says i have burned.
----am i entering my biking right?
----wich callorie number should i go by?
----if i do need to go by my bikes number should i just enter a biking and adjust the time until the callories do match then?

4. I am starting P90X for the second time in a few weeks. were moving and i want to wait until all that stress is out of the way...i made it to 5 weeks last time woo hoo!. i was wondering how i would keep track of the excesises on here? im kind of OCD and am thinking about waching all the videos and making a list of each excersise with the number of reps AND how long each one takes so i know how to enter it lol

I think thats all my questions. thank you to those who read this whole thing lol. any answers will be a big help because i do want to reach my goal!

canroadrunner

You already accounted for the calories burned by standing at your job when you set yourself as lightly active. Don't count those.

cgrout78

I guess as far as the biking goes, I usually just go by what mfp says, if it's somewhat close. You can always invest in a HRM too to be more accurate. I plan to get one here pretty soon.

pupcamper

1. sounds fine
2. Stop logging those you already counted for them in lightly active
3. I use stationary bike, light effort when I cycle around 15mph without much resistance and it is the same as the calorie counter on the bike in the gym. I don't think you are at vigouous effort yet!
4. Can't help you on this one, have never tried it but lots of people have so I'm sure they will help you out.

Bentley2718

As the previous poster said, when you set yourself as lightly active, you already counted the work calories. Since you don't work every day, and you don't always work the same number of hours, you might set yourself to sedentary, and then log the work time every time you work. Also, personally, if I were doing this, I'd log half my work time, at the slowest walking pace in the database, since I imagine walking burns more calories than standing.

Biking- the MFP database for biking more than likely assumes you have resistance, if you're not using resistance, this is not going to be accurate. Machines tend to over-estimate calories burned, so if MFP says you burned more calories than the bike does, the database entry you're using is not the right one for your activity. At most, log the lower of the two estimates, you might even want to log slightly less.

I haven't done P90X, but I imagine that the most appropriate entry might be "calisthenics" either light/moderate or vigorous, depending on how hard you are working when you're doing it, or maybe body resistance circuits. You could also get a heart rate monitor, which is probably more accurate.

SmallerBecky

First of all, welcome to MFP and good for you for wanting to improve your life!

If you put "lightly active" as your activity level, then that covers your job. You shouldn't be adding in exercise calories for any of the time you work.

As far as the biking goes, I'm willing to bet that when you are riding an actual bike, you are more vigorous than you are riding the stationary bike and watching a Netflix show. We tend to get into a more comfortable pace while getting into a movie or TV show without realizing it. So I would put in whatever MFP says for a comfortable bike ride instead. The calorie counter on your bike is probably a little closer to accurate, although if it isn't configured to YOUR specific stats, I wouldn't trust it. I don't trust MFP's estimates either! I use a heart rate monitor, but if you don't have one and cannot obtain one, then I guess I would go with what MFP gives you for a comfortable or moderate bike ride for calorie burn.

As for P90X, I'm not sure how you would log it without a heart rate monitor. I am at the end of Week 9 of P90X myself. I use my HRM but I have read that we burn an average of 600 calories per day on this program. Of course this can't be extremely accurate, as many different people of all different sizes, shapes, ages, and fitness levels do it!

Edited to say: I got talking to my daughter in the middle of writing this so a few other people got in before me and said the same things! LOL Good luck!

sdow

I am a rancher, so I am physically pretty active. When I am trying to lose weight (like right now) I only count my workouts as exercise. You have to have a 3500 calorie deficit to lose one pound (not counting water weight.) It is hard to have that deficit without exercise. You have to be careful, too, not to eat to little. So the exercise really helps. As you get older, you will be glad you were active--it improves the health and make movement easier.
I am the most successful with losing when I am consistant. Good luck.

Nana_Booboo

I'd do sedentary and count your biking as extra.

I only count the extra things I do. I don't count my job, house work, shopping etc becasue it's what I do normally.

Hope this helps.

jbug5j

thank you everyone! it only makes me a little sad that i dont need to add my work (i was enjoying the extra leeway with my callories) Hopefully i can start seeing improvement here in a few weeks.