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There are no calories burned available for being on one's feet all day. I seldom sit down! it is either preparing, serving or cleaning up food at a B&B. Or, baking, checking people in or out at the same B&B or taking care of cats at a cat kennel. This is feeding the cats, cleaning their 'rooms' or cleaning litter boxes. Again, never sitting down. Also, there are no numbers for gardening. Yesterday I spent 4 hours digging up weeds and sifting the dirt, then planting potatoes. I have no idea how much, if any, I dare go over my 1200 calories a day. And 1200 is difficult enough to stick to!

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  • LiddyBit
    LiddyBit Posts: 447 Member
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    When you calculate your calorie allotment in your profile, you can choose active or sedentary lifestyle I think. Just choose active. It will account for all your daily goings-on.
  • tangal88
    tangal88 Posts: 689
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    Parts of that is related to the lifestyle activities option.

    If you are always on your feet, all day everyday - you should NOT be set to sedentary lifestyle. Thats why there are different options to choose.

    A heart rate monitor, or many online calorie calculates will help you guess average calorie burn for many activities. Though to be honest, I personally don't count gardening generally, I just use it as a lucky extra.

    But then I also specifically make a point to include scheduled active exercise in my life everyday. For me thats necessary to loose or maintain my weight and muscle tone, unless I want to limit myself to 1200 calories a day, which to me means I am very very hungry, and I start to loose some lean muscle mass. So not my personal preferred option. :)

    But everyone needs to use what works best for them, and their lifestyle.
  • 6park
    6park Posts: 9
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    thanks, I did not consider making that change. Will do so now.:happy:
  • majordlite
    majordlite Posts: 266 Member
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    Agree with changing your lifestyle to active to account for being on your feet all day. That should give you a few hundred extra calories to play with. Also, there is "gardening, general" in the MFP exercise database. I put in 240 minutes and it came back with over 1,000 calories.
  • 6park
    6park Posts: 9
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    Wow, that is a lot of calories burned. I have to learn my way around this site.:embarassed:
  • therealkittymao
    therealkittymao Posts: 194 Member
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    I might consider gardening to be like "cleaning"... which there is a setting for! I use it when I do a SERIOUS houseclean with moving the furniture and getting on my hands and knees to do the baseboards and all that.