Opinions on activity level setting, please?

invisibubble

I know it's asked a lot, but here we go again. I am so sick of adding extra calories for workouts, especially for strength as it's all just a guessing game, and I know it's important to fuel up on strength days. Anyway, I don't work, but here's what I do per WEEK:
Walk usually at LEAST 3 hours a week to someplace or other (often more than this)
60-180 minutes strength (currently 9lb dumbbells and bodyweight exercises, can't do the gym thang and money and space are tight)
60-180 minutes again on the elliptical, high resistance, feet down.

I'm currently set to light minus 15%, which is 1720 calories a day. I was eating 100-200 calories more on workout days which used to be both strength and cardio 3-4 big workouts a week, but now I'm going to alternate strength one day, cardio the next. . Should I keep with 1720 and eat more on just strength days? If so, how much? Should I just set it to moderate minus 15% and eat less if I'm being a lazy bugger? I really don't like what I'm currently doing. Opinions would be much appreciated.

SelkieDiver

You could go through your diary for the past month and figure out what your average intake and your average calorie burn was per day, then choose the level that is closest to that. Provided what you've been doing the past month or so has been working for you. If it hasn't chose the higher level of calories to slow your loss and the lower to increase your loss.

invisibubble

Yeah but the thing is that those daily burns are all guesswork. Plus I log most as 1 calorie...

SelkieDiver

Okay, I see your problem. what I would probably do is use the burn from Circuit Training under cardio exercises to estimate. Since that is usually approx 1/2 high intensity cardio and 1/2 body-weight exercises you could take the median of what you do between time spent lifting and time spent on the elliptical. So if you do 180 minutes of each every week, the burn would be about 500 per day. (180 minutes CT + 1742 calories, x2 / 7 days). Then you can add in the walking if you want, or ignore it and see how things go.

Or even easier, go to the higher level and see what your weight does over the next 2-4 weeks. If it goes up you know its too many calories!

invisibubble

That's a pretty good idea. Thank you.

barricade9

I purchased a good calorie counter for my workouts. I love it. It costs about $100.00 so it was a bit much but I was able to use it to figure out exactly how much I burn during my workouts and also to get an accurate count of how much I burn while sitting in front of the TV and sleeping. It's kind of good information to have because I will often find out how much I burn during a workout and then subtract what I would have burned anyways if I had just sat and watched TV for that length of time so that I figure out exactly how beneficial my workout was and how long I have to wait in between meals to start burning off what I took in.