question about activity calories

panther87

I walk 6 days a week and do weights 3-4 days a week. i am wondering about all the other calories we burn, like stairs to the laundry room, carrying groceries and that kind of thing. Can we or do we count them, i do quite a bit of calorie burn during my exercising at least 250 each day and some days up to 500 calories- with just walking and weights. Just wanting to get some ideas on what everyone else is doing. Thanks.

TwentyTen

As I understand it, the daily routine things, like laundry, shopping and whatnot are figured in a your 'Activity Level" when you first set up. The walking and the weights though, definitely should get put into your excercise log.

mvl1014

IMHO, these are included in your "activity level" setting in MFP. i.e. even if you're a SAHM don't put sedentary b/c you're chasing toddlers, carrying 40lb bags of salt, etc.

bjs06

Well first of all, have you ever done your rmr? i think it is called bmr on here? either way, it tells you how many calories you would burn in a day if you did absolutely nothing but breathe and lay down all day. it's pretty interesting to figure it out. i only count calories that i burn when i go to the gym, or a class, and am making a conscious effort to exercise that I wouldn't be making when i was regularly doing laundry or whatever. before you started losing weight, you were probably still running around doing errands and laundry but it wasn't really getting you too far. it's great to have an active day though.

i don't eat my exercise calories, so I guess it would probably matter more to people who like to eat theirs.

iplayoutside19

I walk 6 days a week and do weights 3-4 days a week. i am wondering about all the other calories we burn, like stairs to the laundry room, carrying groceries and that kind of thing. Can we or do we count them, i do quite a bit of calorie burn during my exercising at least 250 each day and some days up to 500 calories- with just walking and weights. Just wanting to get some ideas on what everyone else is doing. Thanks.

Depends. I have my activity level set at sedintary because I'm at a desk 8 hours a day. However, on a day off, or the weekends I'm much more active and thus burn more calories. I'm not saying a I log all the moving around I do, but it's something I consider because I can definatly tell my body needs more calories on those days.

If it's something that is obvious that I'm going to burn a lot of calories outside of "excersise" I log it. Like moving a bunch of boxes, or playing golf. Just because it wasn't done for the express purpose of burning calories doesn't mean they're not being used.

Azdak

I think that most people VASTLY overestimate the avg amount of calories they burn doing casual activity. There have been some studies done on large groups who were monitored pretty consistently and assigned a daily activity number. Within the standard error of estimate, it turned out that about 75% of all adults are essentially motionless--meaning the activity they do was so minimal in intensity that even though they were technically "moving", they were expending minimal amounts of energy. Just because you are moving, or even experiencing fatigue from an activity, doesn't mean you are actually burning a significant amount of energy.

In my mind, intermittent activity should be placed in a long-term context. Maybe you exerted yourself doing housework one day, but that has to be 'averaged out" over the other days when you weren't doing anything. Someone who has a job that requires a lot of walking or physical effort, or who performs that effort on a routine basis should include that as part of their general "activity level" rather than a separate entry. Our ways of measuring and estimating calories--both intake and output--are not that precise that it makes sense to keep such a close count.

95% of the people I see golfing--even those who are walking--are not exerting themselves sufficiently to count their game as a separate "workout" . If you have to spend 4-5 hours playing 18 holes, you are not really exerting yourself, even though you are moving around. If the course is clear, I can walk and play 18 holes in a little over 2 hrs and I wouldn't think of counting that as a "workout". I either work out before I go out, or I count that as "rest day".

Just my opinion.

PS: I also shoveled snow 3 times in the last 24 hours. Don't count that either.

jsflynn

I am doing P90X, have no idea how to count some of my days. For example, today we did core synergistics, a killer workout the I probably did about 3/4 of.
Does anyone have any suggestions how to count calories burned. It was pretty easy to figure out Kempo because there is kickboxing in the database. Thanks