very active vs counting exercise??

No if you're set to active then your exercise is included in that number.

I prefer to choose sedentary ( I work an office job) and add my exercise in and eat about 60% of MFP exercise count (the count I get from my exercise bike). I like to do it this way so that I don't eat too many calories on my more sedentary days. U can also figure your cals on a tdee calculator and manually choose those cals for your MFP calorie goal.

Use a TDEE calculator instead.

There's no such thing as "starvation mode." People who have been feed to little in wars and prisons in other parts of the world didn't get fat, they lost weight and sometimes died. If you eat too little, you'll be hungry and lethargic, but it won't prevent you from losing weight.

It is up to the person since nobody is really sedentary unless they are laying in a hospital bed or in a wheel chair. My activity in MFP is set to active because although I don't work, I am moving around all the time doing things in the house, garden, shopping etc.

I log my exercise calories just for the heck of but mostly because I care about the time/minutes that I spend exercising, not for the actual calorie count or to justifying eating more. MFP and machines give inflated numbers and I don't use a fitness tracker because it doesn't doesn't apply to my fitness/exercise routine.

If I were to eat all or even part of my exercises calories all the time, I would gain weight (small and old female), so my method works for me since I am in maintenance. And by the way, I used similar approach when I was trying to lose a few lbs.

Bottom line is that people should experiment and try to use the method that works for them, either for losing or for maintaining.

Just pick something and log and adjust based on your results.

I have a desk job, and I log pretty much every step I take outdoors as exercise (so, I don't log trips to the printer or the office kitchen or bathroom, or walking around inside my own house, or at the grocery store, but pretty much everything else, including walking to the subway or to a carry-out place for lunch or doing yard work or heavy housework), and I still had to raise my activity level to active (not just lightly active) to have MFP's estimate of my daily calorie burn before accounting for logged exercise come close to what my actual results indicate my pre-exercise calorie burn is, based on more than two and a half years of logging. Even set at active, MFP still thinks a woman of my weight, height, and age would be burning about 200 calories a day less than my CICO logging (yes, I use a food scale at home and double-check the entries I use, and I use MFP's famously over-stated estimates for my exercise, unless I use a machine and it says it was less--but usually MFP's estimate is lower than the cardio machine's estimate) and weight records say I do. I can only think I'm logging timber or mining coal in my sleep.

I am a bit of of a fidgety person, inclined to practice dance steps and what-not while I'm waiting for the coffee machine, the microwave, etc., but a full activity level plus 200 calories of fidgeting? Then, too, MFP's formula may be assuming post-menopausal at my age, but what I've read suggests that's only about 400 calories across the whole month (or 13 or so calories a day). I may have a little more muscle mass than the average woman of my age and BMI, but all of this together doesn't seem like enough to account for the difference between my results and the prediction of the formula.


TL; DR Anyway, what I'm saying is, all the formulas in the world don't beat your own data, whether you choose to base it on eating back exercise calories or not -- or even whether your logging is accurate or not. So long as you're reasonably consistent, your logging and results will show you what to expect from what you eat -- even if you're consistently logging 1400 calories of food as 1200 or 1600.

Ashtoretet wrote: »

Pam_1965 wrote: »

Ashtoretet wrote: »

If you choose anything beyond sedentary you don't eat back your calories. Don't use the MFP calorie counter for exercise. Calibrate machines to your age/sex/weight and then halve the calories burned total to get a reasonable "eat back" amount.

I hope this isn't right. I am set to Lightly Active and am given calories to eat back every day. It just takes more activity before I get them.

What do you mean you're given calories to eat back?

From exercise. I have my fitbit syned with mfp, so I'm given extra calories to eat back from my exercise burns.

Oops, double posted. I can't figure out how to delete a reply.

Pam_1965 wrote: »

Ashtoretet wrote: »

If you choose anything beyond sedentary you don't eat back your calories. Don't use the MFP calorie counter for exercise. Calibrate machines to your age/sex/weight and then halve the calories burned total to get a reasonable "eat back" amount.

I hope this isn't right. I am set to Lightly Active and am given calories to eat back every day. It just takes more activity before I get them.

It isn't right.

What the overwhelming majority of respondents said is right - that you set your activity level based on what you do outside of intentional exercise, such as work & daily chores. That's how MFP is designed to work.

If, say, someone works loading & unloading trucks all day, there's no way they should choose "sedentary".

If you have better information than the MFP calorie calculator for exercise (Fitbit, HRM, better calculator, whatever), use it - you can override (type over) the calories MFP estimates for an exercise, or add your own custom exercises (MFP will use the calories-per-minute of your first use of a custom exercise to calculate subsequent uses of that exercise with a different number of minutes).

And you still may have to adjust your settings after you have a month or two of experience: Though my actual life is sedentary, I found I had to set my MFP activity level to "Active" and eat back all my (HRM) exercise calories in order to get MFP to give me the right calorie goal. Nothing trumps your own experience.

Afura wrote: »

Gisel2015 wrote: »

It is up to the person since nobody is really sedentary unless they are laying in a hospital bed or in a wheel chair. My activity in MFP is set to active because although I don't work, I am moving around all the time doing things in the house, garden, shopping etc.

I log my exercise calories just for the heck of but mostly because I care about the time/minutes that I spend exercising, not for the actual calorie count or to justifying eating more. MFP and machines give inflated numbers and I don't use a fitness tracker because it doesn't doesn't apply to my fitness/exercise routine.

If I were to eat all or even part of my exercises calories all the time, I would gain weight (small and old female), so my method works for me since I am in maintenance. And by the way, I used similar approach when I was trying to lose a few lbs.

Bottom line is that people should experiment and try to use the method that works for them, either for losing or for maintaining.

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)

So by MFP calculations as I have a desk job, I am sedentary. Their calculations aren't based on being completely immobile.

MFP says this, which is why so many people (without Fitbits, since if you have an activity tracker it doesn't matter) improperly choose sedentary. But what MFP assumes for sedentary is really, really sedentary. I have a desk job and no young children; I simply live in a city, and yet I am easily lightly active (when it comes to proper calorie goal) even before any intentional exercise just because of walking for errands and commuting.

This is also why extra calories from moving around kick in so early when you do have a Fitbit (or the like) synced.

nicoleash126 wrote: »

I know this isn't my post, but going along with what you guys are talking about...

I'm a stay at home mom 5 days a week, meaning in my feet quite a bit, cleaning chasing a toddler, carrying a toddler, etc. and work out everyday. Am I classified as lightly active?

SAHM here. I am set at lightly active and seem to be averaging 1.5lbs/week. I was previously set at Active, but personally found my calorie goal too high (wasn't losing as fast).