Lightly Active or Active?

cheerupbrighteyes

"Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)"

I set myself as lightly active when I signed up but I am thinking maybe I should put active. Basically I work in retail 5 days a week. During the week day I spend 3 hours running around the store doing price changes, price checks, checking expiration dates on various items including 40 lb dog food (this really depends on what needs to be done during the week though). The last 5 hours I am mostly just on the register, and occasionally I am doing more price checking etc.

On Friday and Saturday I help work the truck if I'm not stuck on the register- I do small totes on Friday and the past few Saturdays at least I've been either working the giant dog treat pallet or finishing cat food (did I mention it's a pet store?), and if I am not doing that I am doing customer service which is a lot of walking around bugging people if they need help/zoning.

My off of work days is when I try to run/walk a couple miles on the treadmill + maybe the 30ds. On work days I stick to a 30 minute exercise after work (elliptical, treadmill, 30ds or quite recently my bike). I try to do some sort of work out 5 times a week.

so based off of that what do you guys think? I am just kind of wary that mfp has me netting only 1290 cals, I feel like I maybe should be eating more but I'm not exactly starved by the end of the day either.

Mokey41

I would say you are lightly active. Just walking around a store or working the register doesn't get your heart rate up enough to burn a lot extra. You can always back off your pounds per week loss level if you feel you aren't getting enough to eat. Unless you are losing huge amounts of weight each week I'd just keep doing what you're doing.

jzammetti

I have the same quesion about activity modifier levels - as do many many others.

i finally broke down and ordered a heart rate monitor. I plan to wear it 24/7 for a week and track my average daily calories burned. From that average I will figure out my actual calories needed. I hope it works!