Lightly Active or Active?

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pinkbilly009
pinkbilly009 Posts: 7 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I currently work at a desk job and university part time. However, I workout six days a week for 45-60 minutes with a HR of 145-165. Does this make me lightly active or active?

Last summer I "accidentally" left my activity level on "sedentary" and lost about 25lbs. Working out twice day for 4-5 days a week. Now that I've lost the weight and am still working out almost every day, 1400-1600 calories still leaves me feeling hungry.

Any suggestions on how to lose that last 5-10lbs?

Replies

  • soccerkon26
    soccerkon26 Posts: 596 Member
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    I attend college 2 days per week and work at a desk job 3 days per week; I placed my setting at Sedentary, but eat all of my exercise calories
  • pinkbilly009
    pinkbilly009 Posts: 7 Member
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    How often do you workout?
  • alabella
    alabella Posts: 36 Member
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    Get a fitbit, it will assess your activity for you.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    Lightly active. It's normal daily activity-workouts are separate.
  • tibby531
    tibby531 Posts: 717 Member
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    try lightly active and eat back maybe 50% or so of your calorie burns, and see if that helps. if you're still hungry, bump up the intake. fuel that fire! :) best of luck!
  • SingRunTing
    SingRunTing Posts: 2,604 Member
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    Activity level isn't about your exercising. It's about your every day activities (like do you have an active job). A nurse would have a more active baseline than an office worker.

    If you work a desk job and don't move around much aside from your purposeful exercising, I would put "sedentary". If you have a desk job and still get up and walk around quite a bit, you might be "lightly active".

    Then you are supposed to log your workouts and eat back some or most (depending on how you are measuring your calorie burns) of your earned exercise calories.

    This is how MFP is designed to work. It's not the only method, but its the MFP generic method.
  • pinkbilly009
    pinkbilly009 Posts: 7 Member
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    Thank you everyone for replying back! It really means a lot :)
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
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    pinkbilly009 wrote: »
    I currently work at a desk job and university part time. However, I workout six days a week for 45-60 minutes with a HR of 145-165. Does this make me lightly active or active?

    Last summer I "accidentally" left my activity level on "sedentary" and lost about 25lbs. Working out twice day for 4-5 days a week. Now that I've lost the weight and am still working out almost every day, 1400-1600 calories still leaves me feeling hungry.

    Any suggestions on how to lose that last 5-10lbs?

    Pinkbilly,

    Welcome, and congratulations on your 25 pounds you threw away! :D

    I work a desk job as well, work out about 6 hours a week (heavy weight lifting and running), and my activity level is set to active. I also eat most of my exercise calories back.

    You want to lose the last 5-10 pounds at .5 pounds a week, which means very slowly. If you are eating 1400-1600 calories, my guess if you have your goals set to lose 1-1.5 pounds a week. If this is true, you need to raise you calorie goals to lose that half pound a week. If you're hungry, it sounds like you need to eat more anyway, while staying in your calorie deficit.

    The last few pounds are hard to lose, and setting aggressive goals is not sustainable.
  • pinkbilly009
    pinkbilly009 Posts: 7 Member
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    Thanks so much for your comment SLLrunner
    That makes a lot of sense. Clearly only eating 1600 calories a day isn't enough for me, espeically when I burn between 450-550 calories in a workout. I lost most of my weight from running, but with the extreme cold warnings in my area, I haven't been able to muster the courage to run outside. Running on a treadmill is just awful (IMO). I have bumped up my calories to 1870 and I'm not eating back my calories. I hope this works for me :)
  • higgins8283801
    higgins8283801 Posts: 844 Member
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    I had mine set for sedentary and realized I was getting 6-7000 steps a day in on my non workout days. So I bumped myself up to lightly active
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
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    pinkbilly009 wrote: »
    Thanks so much for your comment SLLrunner
    That makes a lot of sense. Clearly only eating 1600 calories a day isn't enough for me, espeically when I burn between 450-550 calories in a workout. I lost most of my weight from running, but with the extreme cold warnings in my area, I haven't been able to muster the courage to run outside. Running on a treadmill is just awful (IMO). I have bumped up my calories to 1870 and I'm not eating back my calories. I hope this works for me :)

    Trial and error.

    Even though I work at a desk job, I walk on my lunch breaks to the coffee shop or mall, I move pretty fast, and I don't do a whole lot of sitting outside of my job (I am pretty active).

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