Activity Level

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, but I'm having a hard time choosing my activity level. I'm a ski Instructor and sometimes I ski really hard and other days not so much. I was going to keep my level at semi active then add in extra calories if I felt like I had a harder day.

Today I tried adding in skiing, downhill, light effort for the amount of time I was on the hill and it wanted to add in a couple thousands calories. I was pretty tired, but doubt I burned that many. Anyone have any idea how many extra calories I should add in when teaching?

I guess I could buy a HRM, but not ready to shell out the money for it.

Thanks for your help.

that's a tough one. you might want to diligently keep a log of your calorie intake and weight for 5 or 6 weeks and then determine correct numbers for yourself based on that. for example, assume "sedentary" and then calculate what your weight SHOULD be at the end of 5 or 6 weeks and then compare to what it ACTUALLY is, then you'll know how many extra calories you burned over that period and can figure out your correct activity level from that point going forward. it's not going to be 100% accurate, but after you do that, you can then do a second iteration (i.e., another 5-6 week period of diligent logging) and see if the numbers match up with what you see on the scale. i would imagine after 2 or 3 iterations, you should be pretty darn close on your numbers.

Hmm, okay, I can try that. I guess I just want to make sure I am eating enough calories for right now. I don't want to eat too little or too much.

figure out your sedentary BMR and try eating at that level. treat all of your skiiing as "extra" exercise. if you're hungry at the end of the day, eat more calories until you're not hungry. log EVERYTHING. log your weight too. then at 5-6 weeks (or maybe at 3-4 weeks) run the calculations and see how far off sedentary is from your actual activity level. then you can make the proper adjustments with confidence and try another iteration to really zero in on the correct numbers for yourself. most likely you won't get one of the standard multipliers like 1.2 or 1.375. those are just rough guidelines. you should get a multiplier that is specific for you and your activity. that's better!