Cooking professionally - do I count it?

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luckychef13
luckychef13 Posts: 21 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hey everybody! Just a quick question. I've scoured the boards and can't seem to find a concise answer to this. I'm a chef and spend 8-12 hours a day, on my feet, cooking in a hot kitchen. We are a very busy place and I run a saute line, flipping pans, bending, lifting, and running back and forth all shift. I'm curious if I should log my time at work as "cooking and food prep". I set my activity level as "light activity" due to the fact that before I started this weight loss journey I was pretty sedentary outside of work. I have been logging about 6hrs of "cooking/food prep" per shift which is logging as over 1000 calories burned. I just want to make sure I should be deducting those, or if I should change my daily activity level and not count any of my time cooking. Thanks for the help!

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  • tommygirl15
    tommygirl15 Posts: 1,012 Member
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    I'm also a cook, and I set my activity level to 'active' for that reason.... especially if the job includes putting away stock and all that other fun stuff. I think you're better off upping your activity level rather than to log it as exercise each day because your body has already become accustom to that.
  • ldonahue74
    ldonahue74 Posts: 53 Member
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    I wondered the same thing, as I'm in the same line of work. I, however, have not been counting it towards my activity
  • kimberliiw
    kimberliiw Posts: 242 Member
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    I would change my activity level. I work in the health field and walk 6 miles a day and don't count it. If I ate a thousand extra calories a day I would gain like crazy.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,020 Member
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    I'm also a chef, and sure if your on a busy line, your burning more calories than the average person......again, your going to have to see where your TDEE is and work from there.......lightly active is probably too low, maybe somewhere between that and moderately active. Monitor your progress and make adjustments.
  • TheRealParisLove
    TheRealParisLove Posts: 1,907 Member
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    Just set your work activity to "very active" then add in any additional exercise you do outside of work. My husband works in construction as a framer, and he gets about 1500 additional calories to play with than if he were to set his activity as sedentary, such as an office worker.
  • Fr3shStrt
    Fr3shStrt Posts: 349 Member
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    You can get a more accurate and easier to follow plan if you figure out your TDEE and use that rather than the MFP settings.

    There is a website you can actually log how many hours you are active (cooking), how many hours you do nothing (sleeping), and everything in between. You can run it twice: get a number for days you work and a number for days your off. Subtract 20% for your calorie deficit and use that, then you won't have to log your work day as exercise or put Active as your lifestyle if you don't feel you are very active otherwise. This is the site to do that:
    http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html

    I learned about this here: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets
  • Firefox7275
    Firefox7275 Posts: 2,040 Member
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    Hey everybody! Just a quick question. I've scoured the boards and can't seem to find a concise answer to this. I'm a chef and spend 8-12 hours a day, on my feet, cooking in a hot kitchen. We are a very busy place and I run a saute line, flipping pans, bending, lifting, and running back and forth all shift. I'm curious if I should log my time at work as "cooking and food prep". I set my activity level as "light activity" due to the fact that before I started this weight loss journey I was pretty sedentary outside of work. I have been logging about 6hrs of "cooking/food prep" per shift which is logging as over 1000 calories burned. I just want to make sure I should be deducting those, or if I should change my daily activity level and not count any of my time cooking. Thanks for the help!

    You are confusing physical acitvity with exercise, the latter is a subset of the former. Activities of daily living (work, chores) should be within the activity level wherever possible. Exercise, stuff that makes you fitter or is unusual for you is what you log as extra. Get a pedometer and check your activity level, I suspect you will class as active I've certainly seen studies showing chefs in busy kitchens walking way over 10,000 steps a day. You may be presently double counting some of your activity. Many people think sedentary means doing nothing or only applies to part of your day but it doesn't work like that, sedentary is up to about 6,000 steps per day, regardless of work or home.
  • megsmom2
    megsmom2 Posts: 2,362 Member
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    Overworked prep cook here....I don't count it. I just call it a bit of bonus burn. Of course on delivery days when I'm helping haul stuff around...I might count some of that.
  • 2hobbit1
    2hobbit1 Posts: 820 Member
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    You are confusing physical acitvity with exercise, the latter is a subset of the former. Activities of daily living (work, chores) should be within the activity level wherever possible. Exercise, stuff that makes you fitter or is unusual for you is what you log as extra. Get a pedometer and check your activity level, I suspect you will class as active I've certainly seen studies showing chefs in busy kitchens walking way over 10,000 steps a day. You may be presently double counting some of your activity. Many people think sedentary means doing nothing or only applies to part of your day but it doesn't work like that, sedentary is up to about 6,000 steps per day, regardless of work or home.

    ^^^^^this^^^^
  • purpleipod
    purpleipod Posts: 1,147 Member
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    Change your activity level to what's appropriate instead of counting your job like exercise.
  • luckychef13
    luckychef13 Posts: 21 Member
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    Thanks for all the tips folks! Good luck to everybody and feel free to add me as a new friend!
  • pineygirl
    pineygirl Posts: 322 Member
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    I'm not a chef or cook, but I think my job is similar in the activity level and things I do at work. I don't make food, I make cosmetics. Instead of a kitchen I work in a lab....but the work is similar. I do a lot of bending, lifting and running around. We have delivery days too..we just get raw materials, lab supplies, and dozens of heavy boxes of glass jars and cosmetic packages.

    On the days I'm on the bench all day (usually 3 days a week), I can easily take over 20,000 steps. I will often be sweating and breathing heavy my entire shift.

    If I counted this as food preparation I'd burn like 1000 extra calories. I don't though....I just consider myself moderately active.

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