Fake Activity Calories?

I don't log my normal food preparations every evening when I'm cooking our regular family dinner but when I'm spending hours in the kitchen baking for church or preparing to host a big family gathering or making soups and casseroles for freezing when I'd normally be sitting on the sofa doing not much of anything...then I log it. The same with cleaning the house. If I spend 15 minutes cleaning one bathroom I don't log it but if I spend 2 - 3 hours dusting, sweeping, vacuuming and mopping etc then I log that...I'm up and moving where I'd otherwise be sitting on my butt.

I don't really worry about it unless someone who does it is wondering why they're consistently at a caloric deficit and not losing weight. They're only fooling themselves.

I think it's sort of ridiculous to add cooking as a workout. I'm a cook/baker for a living, so does that mean I should be logging 8+ hours worth of a workout each day? lolz

If you recall when setting up your profile it asks what type of activity level you are at regularly. I am regularly sedentary...I normally sit at a desk for 9 hours a day moving just my hands, fingers and eyes. If I were to spend 8 hours on my feet moving around a kitchen baking foods then that would be a significant increase to my calorie burn for the day. If you were to change jobs to a sedentary one then you'd need to adjust your calories down to allow for the lack of movement.

I wear a Striiv Pedometer and just log those calories. It works for me!

The only thing I log are visits to the gym or any other form of exercise. However, sometimes I do log cleaning because when I am lugging a heavy vacuum up and down stairs, scrubbing my tile, mopping floors, scrubbing toilets, then hell ya that is a workout. I am sweating by the end!

But, I also don't let what other people log as exercise bother me. It's their diary and their preference, why should I let it bother me or annoy me?

@P :frown:

really i was about to add 5000 cal burn for sewing up a sock too!

I only log workout DVDs, running, and gym visits. I don't log food prep or anything like that. I already am on my feet 9 hours a day so my options are set as "active". I don't think logging non workouts would be helpful.

I just like adding cleaning because it makes me feel like I wasn't wasting time. I would add dancing around singing Disney songs if I could, but I'll just leave it as cleaning.

This topic has been hashed over so many times! Basically, if your typical day is "sedentary" and that's how you've set your personal information, then anything in addition to the "usual" is considered exercise. You may see that things like sewing and food prep don't really give you that many exercise calories. But they do add some - and everything can add up. I sew - which involves a lot more than sitting at a machine. I am up and down (squats), ironing pieces (weight lifts), constant movement - which is way more than my daily grind at a computer. You bet, I add them! And when I'm cooking - I'm on my feet the whole time, moving all around the kitchen, chopping, mixing, lifting, bending - why not add that as exercise. The beauty of this site is you monitor yourself. If you don't want to add those kinds of things to your exercise diary, don't. But don't judge others because they do.

In my humble opinion, most activities that include movement will eventually burn calories but not necessarily burn fat. The good old fashioned notion of 'if you are burning more calories than you are consuming then you are heading in the right direction', for weight loss of course, is a start.
Recording all the activities no matter what they are might be useful to a person to look back and see what they have been doing and notice progression or the opposite. I think you have to find what ever works for you which may or may not be the same as others you encounter? I do see the other side to it of course...

Personally I only include actual exercises (invloving increased heart rate and sweat) on my log rather then movement involved in daily tasks like food prep, cleaning, etc. But to each their own

I don't care if people want to log 1500 calories burned doing 6 hours of dusting or whatever as long as they don't go eating all those calories "back" and then wonder why they aren't losing weight.

I log breathing.

PapaverSomniferum burned 37 calories in 6000 minutes doing " Breathing Light to Moderate Effort "

LOOL

I only log , real cardio burning sessions. I do weightlifting along with cardio but do not log that even though I burn calories, because this sight does not allow you to compute that .

I don't care if people want to log 1500 calories burned doing 6 hours of dusting or whatever as long as they don't go eating all those calories "back" and then wonder why they aren't losing weight.

^^^^
THIS! I've unfriended people because I get tired of seeing them logging crap then whining because no matter how hard they try they just can't lose. It has to be a slow metabolism or some disease or just that they are that special snowflake not that they logged all kinds of stupid things and then ate those calories back. If you have to log every move you make all day to get more food then you still haven't gotten your head into a place where you're going to lose and maintain. Thin people don't go around all day thinking "Wow, I went up and down stairs today a couple times so I can have 2 extra cookies". It's a fat person's mindset that makes you seek to justify your food intake.

They might as well log breathing in my opinion! I don't log activity points for general day to day moving around. Yesterday I took down all my Christmas decorations & even though this is not normal activity I didn't log since I didn't feel like I was doing something deliberatly to work out.