Exercise Calories

Whenever I work, I enter in walking for however many hours I'm at work, because I'm constantly on my feet and going. The downside to this is it gives me over two hundred calories everyday I work that are extra, and I'm having trouble eating up to those extra calories. And when I do, I almost always go over on fat, protein, or carbs. On days I don't work, I burn off almost nothing, and I tend to go over my calories, or else go too over on fat or carbs. And parties, how do you guys manage parties? Any advice would be wonderful, 40 lbs feels like a big goal.

did you account for this activity when you did your initial goals (in the activity level section)? If you did, then you shouldn't count these.

when you did your goals when u joined, it asked you what your normal daily activity is like. if your on your feet all day its probably sedentary, thats wat mine is. i work retail.. so you should have put that in and thats already factored into your calorie goal so you shouldnt count that. only thing to count is excercise calories beyond your "normal" daily routine. like going to the gym and stuff like that... otherwise you could actually be eating more than your supposed to cause they have already added that in

when you did your goals when u joined, it asked you what your normal daily activity is like. if your on your feet all day its probably sedentary, thats wat mine is. i work retail.. so you should have put that in and thats already factored into your calorie goal so you shouldnt count that. only thing to count is excercise calories beyond your "normal" daily routine. like going to the gym and stuff like that... otherwise you could actually be eating more than your supposed to cause they have already added that in

I think you meant to say "if your on your feet all day its probably lightly active", right? Sedentary would be a desk job, or something where you weren't active at all during the day.

I didn't give myself exercise goals at all, becuase I know there are days when I will hardly leave the sofa. I'm a book worm. I love spending my free time curled up with a good read, and on top of that I hate the gym (I know there are other ways to get in exercise, I just tend not to go out of my way to do them), so I figured if I did any exercise, it would be like icing on the cake.

its not an exercise goal. When you set up your weight loss deficit, and walk through the goals wizard, it asks you what your activity level is. If you put sedentary, that means you don't do any (or hardly any) exercise as part of your regular daily activity. If you put lightly active it would be like saying, you are a waitress, or maybe a teacher, or someone who's on their feet walking all day, but not really exherting themself. Active would be like a dock worker, or someone who digs all day or maybe a carpenter (some carpenters, not all)...etc. or maybe a coach of a team that does a lot of work with that team every day. Very active would be someone who's either a professional athlete of some kind, or maybe some athletic trainers might fit that category.

It's basically just a way for MFP to make it easier to guess at your maintenance calories before you add additional exercise.

I just went and checked, I put myself down as sedentary, becuase I don't work everyday, just some days. I've worn a pedometer to work before, I walk several miles during my shifts, but I only work a couple days out of the week, and the length of the shift and the number of days I work varies every week.

And on top of that, Im eating within 200 or so cals earned from work, and still loosing weight.

then you're probably somewhere in the middle. that's when it gets hard. There's no in between estimate using the wizard. But you can use custom options and cut the middle. MFP is good like that, if you increase the calories manually, it'll change the percentages for you, which is nice.

One thing to remember though, if you do something a lot (especially walking) and it doesn't actively fatigue you, it's not going to give you the same burn as something that your body isn't used to (I.E. the concept of muscle memory). I'll elaborate if you like, but it's getting off topic if I do, so I'll leave it there.

What do you mean by somewhere in the middle? What you're saying sounds useful, but I don't quiet get it.

ok well. The idea of activity level is to help MFP to figure out what your metabolic rate is and thus, what your maintenance calories are (what you need to consume to stay the same weight without adding extra exercise to the mix). In order to give you a deficit, MFP must have a starting point. So if you say (for instance) you want to lose 1 lb per week, MFP knows that equals a 500 calorie a day deficit (500 X 7 = 3500 which is the amount of calories in 1 lb of fat).

In order to apply that deficit, MFP must know what to subtract it from. It takes your weight, height, age, sex, and ACTIVITY LEVEL to find out what your maintenance calories are via a (relatively complex) calculation.

If your activity level is sedentary, your maintenance calories will be lower than if you set it to active (try it out and see what I mean, go into your goals, set "the amount of weight you want to loose" to maintenance, and see what your daily calories are, then go back and change your activity level to Active and see what it is again, the difference will probably be between 300 and 500 calories a day.

so you see, the wizard version has no setting between sedentary and lightly active. When I say split the middle, I mean, set it to sedentary, write down that calorie number, then set it to lightly active, wright down that calorie number, subtract, and split that number in half and use the custom goals to set your calories.