Carpentry and activity level?

katherinagerhardt
katherinagerhardt Posts: 5
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi,
I'm new here and new to this whole journey. I am a carpentry student and do at least 4 hours hands on in the shop everyday. Lately I've been doing some pretty heavy lifting and celebrated at finally being able to pull myself up through the joists I was building which I couldn't do the first two days. I have my activity level set to moderate, is that what it should be at or should it be higher? I originally had it lower, I have no idea how to track my fitness and exercise levels.

Any advice or suggestions are appreciated.

Replies

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Go with the descriptor that best describes your day without exercise. Make adjustments as necessary as per real world results. These calculators aren't gospel...they're just offer up a reasonably good starting point. Go with something and give it a few weeks and then tweak your calorie goals as necessary.

    With exercise...with MFP, that is additional activity above and beyond your day to day stuff. You account for this activity after you do it by logging it. MFP will then give you your exercise calories to "eat back" as they are unaccounted for previously. You just have to be very careful to not overestimate burn. People don't burn as much as they think they do and rely far too heavily on data base numbers and various calculators...when in reality, there are just way too many variables for these databases to be correct. Most of the burns in MFP are vastly overstated...largely because people use descriptors like "vigorous" because it made them very tired afterwards because they are out of shape....but the database is assuming they are in pretty good shape and performing vigorous effort...so they get like 900 calorie burns for 30 minutes of swimming or something which is totally ridiculous. It's pretty hard to burn more than about 10 calories per minute which was always my ceiling when I was doing this.
  • fallingtrees
    fallingtrees Posts: 220 Member
    You could either do it that way, or pick a lower activity level as your baseline and then log your hours of Carpentry as exercise. I usually "eat back" about half my exercise calories.
  • katherinagerhardt
    katherinagerhardt Posts: 5
    Thank you for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate the advice. :happy:
  • Chieflrg
    Chieflrg Posts: 9,097 Member
    Go with "moderate" since you are only doing four hours.

    I'm a carpenter as well, when you put in 8 hours bump it up to the highest. We are pretty much the top dog of burning calories for a job...
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    Exercise = workouts. You're 100% correct that carpentry is part of your activity level.

    Weight loss takes a whole lot of trial & error to find what works for you. The goal should be to find the maximum number of calories at which you lose weight, not the minimum. Bump your activity level up for two weeks, then reevaluate.

    Read this: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants
  • iwannarideu
    iwannarideu Posts: 6
    I also work in a trade but i only count us as lightly active because some days are less while other are a workout itself

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