what activities are included in "sedentary" setting?

Normal cleaning, I don't log. Inlaws visiting from out of state cleaning... I logged that. If I have to move furniture, it's exercise. I logged painting a room, too. And shoveling snow. I'd probably log mowing the lawn, but I'm hoping to be at my goal weight by then and won't be micromanaging my calories as much.

At first, I logged the walking I did while shopping. But I just bumped myself up to lightly active instead of sedentary to take care of things like that. I do spend a lot of time sitting at the computer, but I'm too active to sit through a whole movie without getting restless.

I am a SAHM and I dont log anything but actual exercise (ie what I do at the YMCA). The only extra thing I add is the "walking" i do when grocery shopping or mall shopping. I count everything else as normal activities. and if I burn a few extra calories doing it, then i guess its my gain (or should I say weight loss).

This is what I do, too. I have a 3-year old and a 4 1/2-year old, so when I load them both up in a Target cart with that huge double seat added on the front, then add 40lbs of dog food, 32 cans of cat food, cat litter, a couple of gallons of milk and all the other groceries I buy, and I'm pushing that sucker around for 90 minutes from one end of the store to the other, you bet I'm going to add walking and pushing a grocery cart. I normally subtract 100-200 calories from whatever MFP says before I enter it so I'm not overstating the calories burned. I also don't normally add housecleaning unless I've had an unusually busy day of it, like walking up and down our stairs to the kids' room and getting/washing laundry, making beds, cleaning the bathrooms, vaccuuming and sweeping. Stuff I usually spread out during the week. If I do most of it in one day, I log it. Depending on how much of a sweat I work up, I'll put "vigorous" or "light" cleaning, and I automatically cut the amount of time I cleaned in half before I enter it in. I also only log food prep if I'm on my feet for a long time with elaborate meal preparation. Once in a while I'll take a Sunday and make a bunch of freezer meals, so I'm cooking most of the day. That type of food prep I'll log. But most of those things I wouldn't consider "every day" activities, so I think I'm ok.

I will sometimes log light house work, but it is on specific days, such as the day I carry all the laundry down 2 flights of stairs, sort return empty hampers and carry the clean clothing up and put away. I figure that job is a good work out. I will also count the calories when I do something like cleaning the outside windows. I use a long pole and wash third floor windows.

I'm a SAHM and from what I was told, that your normal every day activities should not be logged because even though your body is burning calories, your not going "above" what your body is use to.

I kind of agree with that. Generic looking after self, kith & kin is kind of "status quo".

I have seen logging websites similar to this one which give calories for "personal grooming" which included bathing, showering, brushing your teeth etc.

Can all those people who lost any weight from bathing themselves please form an oderly queue!!! :huh:

The way I look at it is this....
If you have always had staff to do your shopping, cleaning, cooking and child care, and now you have to do it yourself, there might be some argument for looging it.
However, if one is overweight despite shopping, cleaning, cooking and childcare, than those activities alone are unlikely going to earn you extra calories from "exercise".

LOL @ the orderly queue comment!! And my thoughts exactly about activities!!

And yes, a lot of people forget to deduct the normal calories they burn doing nothing - ie: I burn 300 calories on the treadmill for an hour, but if I'd done nothing at all, I'd have burned 70, so I need to subtract that 70 from the 300 to get the actual EXTRA calories.

This is part of the reason some people don't lose weight when eating back their exercise calories.

Yes I think you've hit the nail on the head with this. That's kind of what I meant with "double accounting".

And why I have a problem with specifically "eating" exercise calories and just try to stick to a range instead.

I'm disabled and was always very inactive up until recently. A normal day for me is usually sleeping all day because my meds make me tired, I exercise on the elliptical for 30-40 minutes or do some other form of aroebic activity, cook dinner and maybe throw some laundry in the washer. Now, vaccuuming the entire house, cleaning the bathrooms from top to bottom, washing and changing all beddings from 3 bedrooms, along with sweeping and mopping the entire kitchen and dinning room floor is something that I do NOT do everyday, and it can be very hard on me to do those things. While doing the more vigorous cleaning, I tend to work up a great deal of sweat and my heartbeat is racing as if I were doing 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer, so yes, I would consider that a definate workout especially if I was never very active in the first place. However, I have only logged those heavier duty chores in once, not to eat the calories back but more so just to keep me motivated because I was moving more.I believe that if you honestly feel you are exerting yourself while doing heavy cleaning than yes, go ahead and log it in. I say each to their own, whatever keeps you on track and inspires you to keep going is worth logging! I'm sure there are many people out there who do hard manual labor everyday for their jobs and that to them is normal and they are used to it but for the other half who are and have been sedendary for a long time, vigorously cleaning house is exercise and it does count! I do hope I have made some sense with my post. I just know that I get extremely exhausted while doing those chores above and beyond my normal daily activities.

I only log my food. No exercises just food. I exercise everyday but never count it in.