Calories burned in retail

It's all in the semantics.

Again, whether you add them as an activity level OR as exercise, mathematically it works out to be approximately the same.


I get that people don't want you to call work, "exercise" for the sake of semantics because exercise is related to a specific concept people have, but when the OP just wants to figure out the TDEE, it all counts.

You ARE eating your work calories when you add it in your activity level. Mathematically though, it would not be any different than the OP plugging in as sedentary and assigning an "exercise" number. It's semantically different but not mathematically different.

The OP just wanted to play with the numbers and do a little math. I don't think anyone has any actual figures for you. Well played math nerd. Well played.

(Yes, I am being repetitive in my post).

I wouldn't log it as it's something you do regardless of whether you're counting calories or not. This should be included in your activity level when you enter it on MFP. It takes into consideration how many calories you burn on a day to day basis, PLUS what you burn when working out. Thats how I see it, anyways. Good luck.

I agree that whatever you record this as on MFP exercise options is likely to be somewhat over estimated ... so yeah your preset activity level would be a better baseline.

Thank you!

While is the same thing, it is easier to do it via activity level because it is more accurate than the MFP exercise database.

(We all know that standing at work is not the same thing as a cross fit class but the OP was not asking that. The Op was asking us to think about math not a definition of TRUE exercise).

If everything you did didn't count towards your TDEE, then fitbit and the other devices would not be so popular. It doesn't mean every step I took with fitbit is truly exercise. It is just a measurement of overall TDEE. I agree that for fitness sake, people should include TRUE exercise on top of that.

The bottom line answer though is what donna said. I like the pedometer suggestion as well.

It might be a bit obsessive to be thinking about this, but I work a 7 hour shift at a bookstore where I am standing behind the cash register or moving heavy textbooks around the store. I know that I am definitely burning some cals while at the job and wanted to log them on mfp, but when I typed in standing, the only option that looked good to me was "fishing from river bank, standing." Doing that for seven hours apparently burns 1,723 calories... which seems wayyyy too high for me. Then, I thought maybe I'd log it as "cooking or food preparation" because that seemed to have a similar amount of work to what I do. Even that came up as 984 calories for 7 hours. Am I really burning this many calories??? Does anyone have any advice as to what I can log this work as?

Don't bother--that's the best advice I can give.

It's part of your daily activity. Be thankful that you might have a job that provides a little extra movement. You are burning far fewer calories than you think.

Rule of thumb: have you been losing weight since you worked at this job? If not, then it is already part of your energy balance.

Go me for replying to a 3 year old post! I work in retail and, once I made the effort to eat better and put a bigger effort into my job, I realized that I could lose close to a pound just by working on the weekend. That didn't surprise me that much because of all I have to do (walking, lifting everything from furniture to bikes, pushing carts, pushing carts in the snow, etc.) It all adds up.

It just depends on how strenuous it is. Take a day and not exercise and only go to work... do you notice any weight loss? At the end of the day do you feel like you do when you've worked out? I agree with the pedometer suggestions as well. It'll tell you how close to your daily 10,000 steps you are!

I too was looking to put it in the exercise section just to be disappointed. A little search on the web got me this website:
http://calorielab.com/burned/?mo=se&gr=11&ti=Occupation&wt=150&un=lb&kg=68

And it does count as exercise when I walk anywhere between 7 and 9 miles a day while lifting and carrying objects of up to 35 lbs. It doesn't matter if my body is used to it or not. And it is calories that I burn.
By setting the activity level in the app I only adjust the base calorie setting. But I don't record what is burned by doing this. This only happens when I'm following the the app with its presets, I don't need to record calories burnt by the set activity level. But if I've decided to set my daily calorie goal lower I need to enter work as exercise.
By the way surprisingly the app offers the activity of moving objects in the household as exercise.

It should be factored into your calorie goal, so maybe use lightly active. Its your every day calorie burn and not extra exercise.

I suppose you could use sedentary and link a fitbit/vivofit to mfp to add/increase your daily goal.