What level of activity should I use ? (sedentary lightly active active very active)

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myfatass78
myfatass78 Posts: 411 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Can anyone clarify that level of activity I should be using ? At the moment I'm not going to the gym (next week I swear) but I am also walking over 10 km / 6 miles per day as a minimum. I'm unemployed / student for the most part so there is always going to be periods of doing not much. So am I sedentary or lightly active ? Opinions please.

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  • callyart
    callyart Posts: 209
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    Lightly active would be not sitting around for long periods of time - I am also a student so I put sedentary to be on the safe side.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Gym isn't part of your activity setting anyway.
    You are also using Fitbit calories for your walking so you can't include that either.

    What your weight is doing with your current calorie allowance is far more important than playing with basic settings.


  • kitsilana
    kitsilana Posts: 50 Member
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    I was in a similar situation.
    I started my MFP as 'sedentary' but logging EVERYTHING, so that would include logging all your walking. The only danger there is that MFP seems to be very generous in the number of calories it assigns to exercises, so the general consensus on the forums seems to be to 'eat back' no more than half the added exercise calories.

    After 6 weeks I had more of a sense of how many cals I was ACTUALLY burning every day so I've since increased my basic setting to 'lightly active' but am now no longer logging a bunch of stuff as exercise as they're included.


  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,868 Member
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    myfatass78 wrote: »
    Can anyone clarify that level of activity I should be using ? At the moment I'm not going to the gym (next week I swear) but I am also walking over 10 km / 6 miles per day as a minimum. I'm unemployed / student for the most part so there is always going to be periods of doing not much. So am I sedentary or lightly active ? Opinions please.

    Do the descriptors say anything about exercise on MFP? No they don't...that is because the MFP method uses your day to day hum drum only for your activity level...you log exercise after the fact and you will be allotted more calories to account for that activity. Just be very careful not to overestimate burn.

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