hard labor calorie intake

wordena
wordena Posts: 177 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm a 5'4" female @140# who just started a new job as a laborer on an organic farm. I need help calculating my calorie intake. This is very hard work. For example I spent 8 hours planting by hand today. With lifting and walking. My normal food intake feels no where near enough. I guess I eat roughly 2000 calories a day normally with a few mile jog before I started this job. How much should I eat just to maintain?

Replies

  • wordena
    wordena Posts: 177 Member
    Also I try to maintain a vegetarian lifestyle. So any tips on how to get some high calorie foods in would be great. Eating that many beans at lunch is hard.
  • operation_cute
    operation_cute Posts: 588 Member
    I would change your activity level to one of the higher ones like instead of sedentary, one of the other ones that implies your very active? I forget what their all called, but it implies the kind of job you do this way you can keep that seperate from your exercise cals but still eat enough to fuel your daily job :)

    Edit: just looked it up, it sounds like you need to set it to "very active" go to settings -> update diet/fitness profile and its in there :)
  • benol1
    benol1 Posts: 867 Member
    Hi Wordina,
    If you have a heart rate monitor or activity monitor, I suggest you use that to get an indication of how many calories you are burning during your working hours. My experience has been that the calorie allocations as per MFP's exercise database seem to be based more on fantasy than reality.
    kind regards,

    Ben
  • Synapze
    Synapze Posts: 499
    Based on your Age, Gender, Workload ect:

    1460 = Basal Metabolic Rate.

    2774 = To maintain weight.

    2219 = To lose weight.

    http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/
  • wordena
    wordena Posts: 177 Member
    MFP suggests I eat only 1650 calories while working 8 hours each days as a manual laborer and of I continued by my normal fitness routine 5 days a week. This cannot be accurate! I eat more than that when I'm not doing all the labor!
  • Synapze
    Synapze Posts: 499
    MFP also recommends i eat between 1410 and 1600cals a day (Male, 100kg) and im on my feet, labour intensive for 10 hours a day.

    I tried it and almost died of starvation....eventually not losing anything at all.

    Used Scoobys as a guide, adjusted accordingly, now eat up to 1000cals a day more and am losing again.

    Don't trust MFP..it really needs an overhaul.

    Just my 2 cents.
  • wordena
    wordena Posts: 177 Member
    Thanks, forgot about scooby, yeah I'll look up a suggestion there.
  • latinstarlite1
    latinstarlite1 Posts: 62 Member
    MFP also recommends i eat between 1410 and 1600cals a day (Male, 100kg) and im on my feet, labour intensive for 10 hours a day.

    I tried it and almost died of starvation....eventually not losing anything at all.

    Used Scoobys as a guide, adjusted accordingly, now eat up to 1000cals a day more and am losing again.

    Don't trust MFP..it really needs an overhaul.

    Just my 2 cents.


    I always wondered about MFP's calculations.
  • Quercy
    Quercy Posts: 2 Member
    I'm a gardener and I found the 'active, very active' categories didn't work for me at all; I was starving and losing weight too fast. (Yes that's possible.) I reset it to 'sedentary' and then entered my work as if it were a workout. Now it's working well for me.

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