activity level

Ohnoes
Ohnoes Posts: 98 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
hi guys! i have a question about setting my activity levels... ive been reading around but im still confused about where to put myself.

right now i am stay at home momming. i am not Sedentary. i am constantly moving, i only really sit during the day to eat or if im in the car. we have a large (very large) garden in which i grow my family's vegetables that is practically a full time job to maintain, hauling soil and weeding and raking. we have dogs and cats and boys that need to be cleaned up after (i vacuum every day sometimes!). we have adventures to the playground and dogwalks and little kid games that involve me climbing trees or crawling under beds. i never log any of this stuff as exercise(unless im moving soil for the garden, that is a proper workout), though i see that there is an option to on MFP..

so am i supposed to be lightly active, or active?

in a past life i ran a restaurant kitchen. it was very physically demanding, top speed all times, lifting cases of veggies and huge pots of soup. at the end of the day i was so sore i could barely move some days. would that be considered very active? because i see waitress listed as only active... having worked only in very busy restaurants i would consider the physical demands of a waitress to be greater than that of a mailman (also listed as active) who just walks around all day. i dont want to put myself as active because im not moving nearly as fast/hard all day as my waitresses did, they worked as hard as i did!

BLARGHGHHH. as a detail orientated person, this is difficult for me. i want something concrete, number of steps per day or something, to tell me where to put myself. am i overthinking this? i dont want to mess up by misinterpreting my activity level after i have worked so hard at this. help please, thank you!

Replies

  • beattie1
    beattie1 Posts: 1,012 Member
    I'd call your life now active, and your former profession very active.

    If you want to measure how many calories you burn every day you could use a Fitbit. I have a Fitbit One and I don't have to calculate anything now to get the correct number of calories to eat. It just sits on my bra from the moment I get up and synchronises automatically with MFP. It works out how many calories I've used and what to add on for my target intake - easy. If you do weight lifting, swimming or cycling you have to add those manually, but normal moving around is taken care of. I think you'd be surprised how many calories gardening, vacuuming, chasing around after kids and all the other things that make up an active life take up.
  • Ohnoes
    Ohnoes Posts: 98 Member
    oh my, thank you. what is this magical device that you speak of? off to google.

    i do 40 minutes on the stationary bike 6 days a week, and some strength stuff and yoga class and i log all that but not my regular life stuff. ive never been a sit around the house person, its amazing that i got fat! wait, no its not.... i got fat eating crap and skipping meals in favor of work and drinking too much beer and having kids and living with constant stress. you cant out exercise a bad life?

    thanks for the help! onward and upward.

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