sedentary vs lightly active vs active? Help

aniegurl

Prior to being a stay at home mom I worked in a call center and so it was very easy to classify myself as a sedentary lifestyle. Now however I have a couple of questions. Maybe someone out there can help me

Before when I was 'sedentary' I would list things like cleaning/house work under my cardio for the day, or if I spent an hour at the store shopping I would list that under my cardio. If i am now considering myself 'lightly active' do I no longer count those things because they are a part of my day to day activities?

My day is spent chasing around a toddler and caring for an infant. I cook, clean, laundry, do all the shopping, take the kids to the park, art class, soccer... and anything else that comes up. When my husband gets home I do 45-60 minutes of cardio, which I do record for my daily cardio. I am sure this is very far from an active life style, but how do you really know? Raising kids almost feels like manual labor, lol.

Okay so to make it simple the two questions I have are :

1) If I am now lightly active do my I no longer record daily actives under cardio, house cleaning, walking etc..

2) What is the difference between lightly active and active?


Thank you for your help, advice and opinions.

Mokey41

Are you talking about the MFP settings or in a TDEE calculator. They're two different things. If it's the MFP setting then that's pretty much described beside each of the choices. Sedentary is someone with a desk job but it doesn't mean that you do nothing else. It's still assumed that a sedentary job requires you to move around a bit, do your basic housework, get groceries, attend to your personal business, prepare food, etc. Lightly active is someone whose job requires them to be on their feet more, a teacher for example (although most of the teachers I know spend a good part of their day behind a desk too) and also do all the daily chores of living. It isn't taking in to account any intentional exercise so you would add it to your daily budget.

If you're picking one of those activity levels from a TDEE calculator then it's asking about how much exercise you do in a day as well so you wouldn't add any intentional exercise (running, cardio workouts, lifting, etc) because it's already included.

All that said, unless you're finding that weight is dropping off of you at an alarming rate, I wouldn't get too obsessed with upping your activity level. You may be active during the day but it isn't high intensity heart pounding exercise that's burning a lot of calories. There's a big difference between being generally busy, driving around, doing housework and getting in a good workout with an elevated heart rate for an extended period of time.

aniegurl

Thank you!