Don't know how active I am :-(

Ang8178

Well I generally thought I was light, but I'm thinking I may be more active than that. I'm working out 4 days a week at a gym (two days cardio and two days weights an hour each) When I'm not at the gym I'm walking the dog I count all this as working out so I don't consider it my activity level.

When I'm at home I'm up most of the time cleaning, organising or have some random project going on such as waxing the car or something like that :laugh: These I do not count as exercise. I do not have a job or kids to chase around all day, but I do have a boxer if that counts

I kinda stopped tracking my food because I just felt like I was starving on the days I wasn't working out. I'm 9 pounds away from my goal and it has taken me a very long time to lose the 8 that I have already! Sitting here today I'm ready to give up tracking again because I just feel soooooo hungry! I'm thinking I'm a little more active than I give myself credit for.

Any advice would be great :flowerforyou:

lilchino4af

Maybe you're not eating enough. Try upping your calories by 200-300 every day and see if that helps. Your body may just need a jump start because all your daily activities are burning more than you're replenishing with food.

Yurippe

If you are hungry ALL the time you are:

1. not eating enough or
2. not eating the right things (do you track your protien and fiber, are you at least meeting you goals?)

ileitch

What I do:
- cut out alcohol
- cut down carbs
- walk or swim every day if at all possible
In your profile, perhaps you should change your activity level to moderate and your goal to "lose 1/2 pound per week".
That may give you a bigger calorie allowance. I think if we're hungry, we're not going to stick with it.
I would go back to logging everything, including what you drink.
If you're hungry and you go over, don't worry about it - tomorrow is another day.
Try drinking more water.
Try drinking water before meals.
My doctor suggested doing two swims a day for a week, just to get things started. Two walks would work just as well.
Walking the dog is great exercise. Take longer walks. The best workout for burning calories is something long and low intensity, like walking.
No doubt the last weight is the hardest to lose. You only have nine pounds to go! Be patient.
And while you are waiting, keep in mind that you look great.:flowerforyou:

MacMadame

That sounds like lightly active to me. Unless someone has job has them walking around or on their feet all the time or they do manual labor, it's hard to get over the lightly active category in our society. We have too many "conveniences" and "labor saving devices". :laugh:

I don't think it matters though. You need to set that radio button to the number that causes your actual weight loss to match MFP's predicted weight loss. It may or may not be your real activity level.

For example, MFP says my BMR is 1100-ish. But it's actually 1250-ish. (I've had it measured.) So I need to set my activity level higher than it really is to get MFP to say my maintenance calories are around 1650 (because they are). I think I have it on the max category and -- once you take out my exercise -- I am definitely only lightly active. Or even sedentary. But I lose weight if I select those categories.

OTOH, when I first started, my weight loss was much slower than MFP predicted because my metabolism was slower than average. So then I had to set my activity level lower than it really was to make it work out. (Except I didn't bother because I was on my doctor's program, not MFP's so I wasn't logging exercise anyway.)

MamaBear05

I too am having a problem determining my activity level. I work out 4-6 days a week but I don't count that in my general activity level. I have a desk job and have a little boy that I run around with but nothing I would consider enough activity on a regular basis to warrant going up to lightly active.

To maintain my weight, MFP tells me I need 1760 calories. That's not usually a problem for me if I don't snack on things laying around. But many times, I am much hungrier. Rough calculations of what I used to eat before trying to be healthier show I was eating at least 2000 calories a day (often much more and on weekends it wasn't unusual for me to eat 3000 calories with all the fast food and soda). I maybe averaged one day a week of any sort of structured exercise. But somehow I was not really gaining weight. I used to work out (weight lifting) pretty religiously but had a complete lapse over the past year or so. I definitely lost muscle and had a much higher body fat percentage when I stopped working out but the number on the scale did not really move more than the usual 2-3 pounds fluctuation either way.

My thinking is that there is so much more than weight and activity level that go into determining how many calories your body needs. How else could I consume 300-1000 calories more than my body needs each day without exercising to work it off and not gain a large amount of weight (on the scale)?