Active Settings....HELP!!!

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BonnieandClyde29
BonnieandClyde29 Posts: 1,026 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I am not sure how to set my calories, as i work out only 3 times a week.....walk my dogs 2-3 times a day (which takes a half hour each time, but i do not log it as exersize), but i sleep about 8-9 hours a day and now that it is slow season at my job I sit on my butt a lot in my office (about 6-7 hours out of 8-9)......Any suggestions on what level of activity I should put my settings on? I want to make it as accurate as possible and my calories went from 1460, to 1250, to now 1700 something....HELP PLEASE!!!!

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  • rsellersCST
    rsellersCST Posts: 333 Member
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    Hey... so I set mine at the lowest activity level... because well... I'm also kind of irregular on exercise.

    As for the walking... I use "Jog Tacker" app on my phone. I have an Android phone... and I plug in my age, and weight etc... and it calculates based on how fast and long I go how many calories I burn... and those I do plug in here. I try to only eat back half of my exercise calories if I eat over my target.

    I find it hard to track certain exercises as well... but you just got to do the best you can. I find that the numbers MFP recommends fluctuate a LOT based on all of these things... and I know for ME I can't eat as many calories as it says I can without some SERIOUS exercising and still expect to lose... other people have great success... I think it comes down to your individual metabolism. I know for me mine is slow and always has been.

    You may have to try a week... see how you do for the WEEK and then make adjustments. Day to day there's too many variables... you really have to have a week at least to analyze if you feel you are making progress.

    I can honestly say that 99% of the time I feel satisfied food wise. I do have a fairly fine line though of what my intake can be and still keep losing...

    I'm far from any expert though... lots of experimenting on my part to find my balance or what seems to work.

    I have also tried and continue to try and focus on WHAT I'm eating... not just how much... I'm starting to believe more and more... even if the numbers match when it comes to calories... the content certainly can vary and how our bodies process it is VERY different depending on what it is.

    Good luck!
  • kdub67
    kdub67 Posts: 181 Member
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    I set mine as low even though I work out 5-6 days a week. Because honestly, the rest of the time, I am fairly sedentary. I don't work outside of the house, and if I'm just putzing around, doing laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, etc...it's not really highly "active," if you know what I mean. This setting gives me 1200 calories a day and I do eat back at least half, if not more, of my exericise calories.

    I try to watch what my Fitbit says my calories burned per day are, and they tend to be lower than what MFP gives me (even though it adjusts to match my Fitbit, which is weird, but a totally different topic!). I generally end up burning about 100 cals lower on my Fitbit per day than MFP calculates, so I factor that into my food alottment. I've been able to lose anywhere from a half to up to 2 pounds a week doing this. I'm one pound from my goal, so it's working for me:)
  • BonnieandClyde29
    BonnieandClyde29 Posts: 1,026 Member
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    thanks guys!!! i set it to the lowest active level too, and idk it seems to be working i've already lost a pound when i got on the scale this morning...yay!!!

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