If you walk everywhere, do you count it?

micheleb15

I live in DC and walk everywhere. Every day I walk to the metro, to work, to metro and back home again and everywhere in between. I have a Jawbone UP bracelet that says I average about 10,000-12,000 steps a day which is approx. about 4-5.5 miles. I work at a desk and have a normal day like anyone else. I do this everyday, so I don't consider this any type of working out, but I see alot of people add "10 min walking the dog" or activities to their diary.

Should I include this in my calorie count or is daily walking already factored in? It never occured to me to up my calorie intake from all of the walking, since I do it daily and it's not a planned workout activity.

Apologies for the ignorance. I've never done the TDEE math for weight loss before now.

sastrodder

This is something I have just recently started doing. I often walk into our local town centre at the weekend and I will run my endomondo app until I get to town and then stop it. The normal walk is about 2.5km. Just out of interest one particular weekend I kept the app running. Once I have picked up any bits that I need I usually then catch the bus home. When I got to the bus station and checked how far I had walked the overall distance was 6km.

That was when I decided to include any walks that are 15 mins-ish, as they are kind of mini workouts without even realising you're doing them and as a result I am finding myself doing much more walking. I find myself getting off the bus a couple of stops early, or leaving the house a bit earlier so that I can walk to a further bus stop than the one I would normally use.

omma_to_3

If you are set to sedentary, you should log it. However, most people in this situation, would change their activity level to probably moderately active. That would account for that walking.

You could also wear something like a FitBit and let it add calories for you, based on your daily activity (since it's walking, it would work well).

Fozzi43

I don't..but that's just me.

JesterMFP

If you are set to sedentary, you should log it. However, most people in this situation, would change their activity level to probably moderately active. That would account for that walking.

^This. If you are walking that much, you're not sedentary, you're at least lightly active, maybe more. Since this is a regular part of your lifestyle, it makes much more sense to count it as part of your activity level, and not try to calculate calorie burn for it separately. Logging exercise is more for things that are variable, that you might not do every day.