I need help on deciding what my activity level is?

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salemxo
salemxo Posts: 96
in Health and Weight Loss
On a weekly basis, I walk for about 4 and a half hours (about 3 mph?) and I go on the elliptical trainer for an hour. Would you guys say I fall into the "lightly active" category?

Thanks :)

Replies

  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    no, sedentary and log the above activities as exercise.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    No your activity level is based on your life outside purposeful workouts ...desk job = sedentary
  • Daniilynn11
    Daniilynn11 Posts: 3 Member
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    I've wondered that too. I'm a stay at home mom, for the time being. I go to the gym 5-6 days a week for about an hour and a half each day.

    Would the gym + daily household chores count as lightly active? Or sedentary?
  • Eliz_99
    Eliz_99 Posts: 85 Member
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    I enter mine as sedentary as I do a desk job and log all exercise. If you're including gym workouts in your activity level then I wouldn't also log the exercise.
  • lemonsurprise
    lemonsurprise Posts: 255 Member
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    Agreed. And the same to you Daniilynn. Set as sedentary, use the pedometer in MFP if you have the app, log steps if not, log exercise too and eat half back.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    Your activity level is your normal daily activity. Exercise should be logged separately.
  • bwogilvie
    bwogilvie Posts: 2,130 Member
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    If you follow MFP's method, you should exclude exercise when figuring your daily activity. I exercise about an hour a week, but I log it on MFP, so when I set my activity level, I chose sedentary. (I'm mostly a desk jockey at work.)
  • terbusha
    terbusha Posts: 1,483 Member
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    I don't pay attention to the activity level. If you're wondering about that to find your best calorie level, you don't need it. I figure my optimal calorie level based on my fitness progress. What I do and what I recommend to people is to eat at a calorie level that allows you to make good progress towards your goal. If you are trying to lose weight, eat so you drop 1-2 lbs/week. This assumes an average calorie burn from you getting in all of your workouts. This will be different for everyone, so you'll have to do some trial and error to figure it out. I'd start ~1600 cal/day. Hit this goal, along with your macros and getting in your workouts, for 2 weeks. If you lose 1-2 lbs, you're good to go. If you lose too much, increase your intake and repeat. If you don't lose enough, reduce your intake a bit and repeat. After a few weeks, you'll figure out what works for you in your situation.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,868 Member
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    If you're doing MFP as designed you do NOT include exercise in your activity level...you log exercise after the fact and then get allotted those calories. You have to be very careful in your burn estimations though.
  • salemxo
    salemxo Posts: 96
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    Thanks everyone, that makes much more sense now. I'm a student so I'm usually sitting in class or the library all day, so I'll put my activity level to sedentary then log exercises :)
  • kayleighalford9
    kayleighalford9 Posts: 26 Member
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    i go with the lower level of calories as if i were not logging exercising.....working so far for me
  • salemxo
    salemxo Posts: 96
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    Also, how would I accurately log the calories I've burned from exercising? I'm always worried about over-estimating.
  • mbcieslak87
    mbcieslak87 Posts: 206 Member
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    mazza_pants wrote: »
    Also, how would I accurately log the calories I've burned from exercising? I'm always worried about over-estimating.

    I typically don't log exercise calories anymore and use TDEE -20% instead. However, when I did use MFP + exercise calories, I usually took what MFP thought I would have burned and multiplied it by .75; that way I know I'm at least not over-estimating my burn. It seemed to work well for me.
  • salemxo
    salemxo Posts: 96
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    mbcieslak87 wrote: »
    mazza_pants wrote: »
    Also, how would I accurately log the calories I've burned from exercising? I'm always worried about over-estimating.

    I typically don't log exercise calories anymore and use TDEE -20% instead. However, when I did use MFP + exercise calories, I usually took what MFP thought I would have burned and multiplied it by .75; that way I know I'm at least not over-estimating my burn. It seemed to work well for me.

    Thank you, I'll try out the multiplying by 0.75 and see if that works for me!

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