Sedentary or Lightly Active?

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godlikepoetyes
godlikepoetyes Posts: 442 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
When I started MFP, I set myself at "sedentary" because I moved very little. Now, a year later, I am getting in 10K steps 3-4 days a week. Some weeks I get 10K every day. Some days I go over. And since I have a Polar Loop, I have an activity goal, not just a step goal, and sometimes I hit my activity goal even if I don't get in 10K steps. At what point is one considered "lightly active?"

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  • bioklutz
    bioklutz Posts: 1,365 Member
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    Are you eating the calories back from walking? Is walking exercise for you? If so than there is no reason to change your activity level.

    This is how MFP describes activity levels:
    Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
    Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
    Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
    Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)

    Activity level has nothing do do with exercise but is what your normal life is like. I choose lightly active because I spend most of my working day on my feet.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Activity levels are just a way to get to a reasonable start point.
    After a while it makes far more sense to just manually adjust your calorie goal based on actual results.

    Well done on making such a big lifestyle change though - even if not for weight loss the health and fitness benefits are huge.
  • godlikepoetyes
    godlikepoetyes Posts: 442 Member
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    I'm to a point in my weight loss, after 80 lbs., that I'm losing less, can't eat as much.... I'm trying to figure out how to eat as much as I like, around 1,600 calories, and still lose as much as before, which is impossible... Boo. I'm being unrealistic and need to just face facts. Still, I don't find MFP's description of activity very useful. Same with the exercise database.
  • bioklutz
    bioklutz Posts: 1,365 Member
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    Use your own data to decide your calories then. You have a years worth, right?

    If you are averaging a pound loss a week you have approximately a 500 calorie daily deficit. Watch the scale over a period of a month or two and adjust accordingly.
  • concordancia
    concordancia Posts: 5,320 Member
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    I have been happy with my results setting 10k steps per day to lightly active.
  • godlikepoetyes
    godlikepoetyes Posts: 442 Member
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    concordancia wrote: »
    I have been happy with my results setting 10k steps per day to lightly active.

    Thanks.
  • DarqueDreamer
    DarqueDreamer Posts: 6 Member
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    I don't know if this is a good place to ask but I am having trouble choosing my activity level setting. I have a desk job in a hair salon but I stand up and sweep hair after every client for all 5 stylists. I do and put away 2-6 loads of laundry daily and I take out all the trash daily and am responsible for sweeping the floors daily and mopping once a week. On Saturdays I will start doing makeup for weddings instead of being in the salon too. Would this still be sedentary with the desk job or light activity since I am up and moving often?
  • jacquifrench304
    jacquifrench304 Posts: 131 Member
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    DarqueDreamer wrote: »
    I don't know if this is a good place to ask but I am having trouble choosing my activity level setting. I have a desk job in a hair salon but I stand up and sweep hair after every client for all 5 stylists. I do and put away 2-6 loads of laundry daily and I take out all the trash daily and am responsible for sweeping the floors daily and mopping once a week. On Saturdays I will start doing makeup for weddings instead of being in the salon too. Would this still be sedentary with the desk job or light activity since I am up and moving often?

    You could try lightly active for a month , see how close you are to the loss you selected per week on average and adjust if needed, if you use a step tracker lightly active is around 5k To 10 k non exercise steps a day
  • godlikepoetyes
    godlikepoetyes Posts: 442 Member
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    jacquifrench304 wrote: »
    DarqueDreamer wrote: »
    I don't know if this is a good place to ask but I am having trouble choosing my activity level setting. I have a desk job in a hair salon but I stand up and sweep hair after every client for all 5 stylists. I do and put away 2-6 loads of laundry daily and I take out all the trash daily and am responsible for sweeping the floors daily and mopping once a week. On Saturdays I will start doing makeup for weddings instead of being in the salon too. Would this still be sedentary with the desk job or light activity since I am up and moving often?

    You could try lightly active for a month , see how close you are to the loss you selected per week on average and adjust if needed, if you use a step tracker lightly active is around 5k To 10 k non exercise steps a day

    That's a hard one--I have a Polar Loop. I'm hitting 10K about half of the days, working my way up to every day. But some of those steps are Exercise steps. I can't possibly know which are which. In any case, I have kept myself at sedentary and cut down to .5 lb a week. I think I can be happy with this, at least for a while. I need more food right now to be happy.
  • jacquifrench304
    jacquifrench304 Posts: 131 Member
    edited March 2016
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    godlikepoetyes wrote: »
    jacquifrench304 wrote: »
    DarqueDreamer wrote: »
    I don't know if this is a good place to ask but I am having trouble choosing my activity level setting. I have a desk job in a hair salon but I stand up and sweep hair after every client for all 5 stylists. I do and put away 2-6 loads of laundry daily and I take out all the trash daily and am responsible for sweeping the floors daily and mopping once a week. On Saturdays I will start doing makeup for weddings instead of being in the salon too. Would this still be sedentary with the desk job or light activity since I am up and moving often?

    You could try lightly active for a month , see how close you are to the loss you selected per week on average and adjust if needed, if you use a step tracker lightly active is around 5k To 10 k non exercise steps a day [/
    If your loop can sync to MFP I would set sedentary , allow negative calories and do any exercise logging through the devices app rather than MFP ( this is how I use my Fitbit ) when you do more MFP will give you extra to eat. They who get to eat the most and still lose win
  • mitch16
    mitch16 Posts: 2,113 Member
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    It all depends on what your goals are... If your weight loss is slowing down (as it does as you get closer to goal), then bumping up your activity level to lightly active in MFP will give you more base calories per day--eating more probably isn't going to help you lose faster at this point, unless you combine that with more exercise above and beyond your MFP activity level.

    On the other hand, if you're considering going more towards a maintenance mode, then take the extra calories, but realize that your losses will also taper off (unless you bump up your actual activity level too).
  • DarqueDreamer
    DarqueDreamer Posts: 6 Member
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    jacquifrench304 wrote: »
    DarqueDreamer wrote: »
    I don't know if this is a good place to ask but I am having trouble choosing my activity level setting. I have a desk job in a hair salon but I stand up and sweep hair after every client for all 5 stylists. I do and put away 2-6 loads of laundry daily and I take out all the trash daily and am responsible for sweeping the floors daily and mopping once a week. On Saturdays I will start doing makeup for weddings instead of being in the salon too. Would this still be sedentary with the desk job or light activity since I am up and moving often?

    You could try lightly active for a month , see how close you are to the loss you selected per week on average and adjust if needed, if you use a step tracker lightly active is around 5k To 10 k non exercise steps a day

    I will give that a try. Thank you for the suggestion!
  • kuroshii
    kuroshii Posts: 168 Member
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    If you're getting enough activity that MFP is consistently adding calories to your allowance by the end of the day each day and you find that annoying/confusing to have such a big question mark, consider bumping up your activity level so that the "start point" on your calorie allowance is higher. You might want to turn "negative calories" on if it isn't already.
    Me, I find I get so much less activity on weekends that I'd rather stay as "sedentary" and have it average closer to that baseline on a daily basis than suddenly lower my allowance drastically on weekends.
  • godlikepoetyes
    godlikepoetyes Posts: 442 Member
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    kuroshii wrote: »
    If you're getting enough activity that MFP is consistently adding calories to your allowance by the end of the day each day and you find that annoying/confusing to have such a big question mark, consider bumping up your activity level so that the "start point" on your calorie allowance is higher. You might want to turn "negative calories" on if it isn't already.
    Me, I find I get so much less activity on weekends that I'd rather stay as "sedentary" and have it average closer to that baseline on a daily basis than suddenly lower my allowance drastically on weekends.


    Thanks. This makes sense.

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