Delineation between Sedentary and Lightly Active

b_thurman

I keep revisiting the Goals tab just to keep reminding myself what I'm doing this for, and often go back and forth on which activity level is appropriate for me. The recommendations for the different levels of daily activity suggest that I should probably mark sedentary, because I've got a desk job, so I usually go with that, but I hardly feel sedentary.

I'm a compliance coordinator, and as such I do some walking around between campuses, and to meetings, probably totaling 30-45 minutes a day. I live in a two-story residence, taking the stairs up and downstairs at least 5 times a day. I play with my two-year old son daily, often throwing him in the air, or doing "toddler presses" with him. Is this still sedentary?

I know when I add it all up, I feel like I should probably be choosing a lightly active lifestyle rather than choosing sedentary and manually adding all those activities (I don't even know how I'd classify "toddler presses" in the exercise tab), but I guess I'm looking for a little bit of consensus as to where everybody else draws the line between all of these things.

Where did you draw the line the last time you answered that question?

cedarghost

Doesn't really matter which one you choose. Just pick one, eat as close as possible to that goal consistently, then evaluate after a month or so. If you gained, lower calories. If you lost, evaluate how much and adjust if needed.
You just have to figure out what your body needs and (though most people don't want to hear it) it takes time. But once you do figure it out, dieting is easy.

In fact, I just use MFP to put a number on my phone screen that I know I can eat up to without gaining, and then go from there. I try to stay about 500 below that number but never go above it, if I want to lose. If I want to gain I eat slightly above that number.

brittDbritt

all i do is house work and thats like light cardio and i walk when ever i can that plus eating right and eating less has helped my loss weight