Do I log house cleaning?

No

comicbooklady wrote: »

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

comicbooklady wrote: »

Hi there. I'm new to MFP and have been logging religiously for 1 week. I'm confused on what activity to log, however.

I must sit a majority of the day for my career (drawing), and am working up to fitting in exercise. In the meantime, I put my activity level at sedentary/light.

So lately I've been cleaning house for 3-4 hours per day (picking stuff up, vacuuming, cleaning counters, sorting laundry, cooking meals, doing dishes), but sometimes I break a sweat, and after I feel pretty exhausted.

My question is, do I log that activity, or is that included in sedentary/light activity?

Thanks in advance for your replies!

I'm curious how you managed to set your activity level at sedentary/light. Isn't it one or the other? Or has MFP changed the settings?

You're right, I remembered the settings wrong and confused it with another site. I have it set to Sedentary only.

Well, if you're spending three to four hours a day moving around cleaning the house, I would recommend setting it at light active.

When I set to sedentary, I logged housework. When I realized that 4 or more hours of housework was my new normal, and that I was always over 10k steps, I increased my activity level to lightly active, and quit talking extra calories for housework. I still log my time doing it though, just log 1 Cal on it.

When I first started I set my activity to, "lightly active," for cleaning similar to yours and walking my son to school and home from school (about .5 miles one way) and i lost.

comicbooklady wrote: »

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

comicbooklady wrote: »

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

comicbooklady wrote: »

Hi there. I'm new to MFP and have been logging religiously for 1 week. I'm confused on what activity to log, however.

I must sit a majority of the day for my career (drawing), and am working up to fitting in exercise. In the meantime, I put my activity level at sedentary/light.

So lately I've been cleaning house for 3-4 hours per day (picking stuff up, vacuuming, cleaning counters, sorting laundry, cooking meals, doing dishes), but sometimes I break a sweat, and after I feel pretty exhausted.

My question is, do I log that activity, or is that included in sedentary/light activity?

Thanks in advance for your replies!

I'm curious how you managed to set your activity level at sedentary/light. Isn't it one or the other? Or has MFP changed the settings?

You're right, I remembered the settings wrong and confused it with another site. I have it set to Sedentary only.

Well, if you're spending three to four hours a day moving around cleaning the house, I would recommend setting it at light active.

You really think so? I am so wary of eating TOO much. Is sedentary truly mean sitting 100% per day? Or does that encompass some level of normal activity.

I usually sit to work (long work days) all but 2 hours on a day to day basis to clean/cook, etc. But this last week, and next week is extra, around 4 hours per day, trying to do a full on house clean overhaul. Is that enough for bump it up for just that week?

Thanks for your help! Logging is really new to me and I don't want to make mistakes and waste time

Sorry, I read your OP as saying three to four hours is your new normal. I wouldn't bump it up if it's just one week.

Really, the best thing to do is pick something and log religiously for a month (two would be better, but I know that's asking for a lot of patience) and reevaluate your calorie setting based on your results: How much do you lose per week compared to your goal? Readjust calorie settings based on results.

I know I have my own biases on this issue. I have a desk job, spending most of the day sitting in front of the computer. When I initially started using MFP, I set my activity level to lightly active, I asked MFP for a calorie goal to lose one pound a week, I used a food scale, and I logged pretty much every step I took outside as exercise at the supposedly inflated MFP exercise burns. I averaged about two pounds a week for the first four months (and there really wasn't a very dramatic initial loss that suggests a big water weight factor), not the one pound a week that I was supposed to get. I eventually reset my activity level to "active" (not lightly active), continued my desk job, continued to log all my exercise, including walking, and my results suggest that MFP is, if anything, still underestimating my NEAT by about 200 calories.

Since I use a food scale and the "inflated" MFP calorie burns for exercise, and I don't believe I'm a special snowflake, the only explanations I can come up with are (1) I'm a fidgety person when sitting and tend to kind of dance around the house a bit when there's music on and I'm alone (and sometimes in public ) and (2) the formula that MFP uses assumes that a woman in her 50s has less muscle than I do. (I'm not a dedicated lifter, but I have lifted off and on for my entire adult life, mostly with machines, and moving more to free weights and compound lifts in the last couple of years, so maybe I haven't lost as much muscle mass as the formula assumes.) It doesn't seem like that would be enough to make what I figure is about a 400-calorie difference from what the formula would predict for me at the more realistic "lightly active" setting, but it's all I've got

YMMV

TL;DR: pick an activity level, log for at least a month, assess your results, adjust settings as needed based on results.:

I had my activity level set to lightly active for a month or so, and even though i was averaging 15kms (20,000+ steps) per day i still lost a couple hundred calories every night, and was in the negative if i didn't get enough steps. So my advice would be, if you are going to set your activity level to lightly active or higher, make sure negative adjustments are enabled or you may being eating too many calories.

The only time I would log house cleaning would be if I were doing something above normal, like some kind of spring cleaning chore, and it caused me to work really hard - like until I was sweating.

Machka9 wrote: »

The only time I've counted housework was when we were moving into our new place and I was cleaning and unpacking all evening long for a few days. And although I was up and active all evening long, as I recall, I counted it as 1 hour.

Otherwise, no. I figure if I happen to do a bit more one day, that'll make up for miscalculating a food item somewhere along the line.

That's how i look at it too.. If i have a bigger than usual cleaning day, i see it a bonus/buffer.

I never log anything unless it's intentional exercise in the gym.

I also do a ton of housework, but even sedentary on MFP assumes you will take up to 5,000 steps per day (about 2 1/2 miles), so in my opinion it's not worth it to overestimate.

comicbooklady wrote: »

Thank you all for the helpful input! I think I'll keep it at sedentary for now and see how it goes.

So when the time comes to log exercise in the future, is it more accurate to keep it at sedentary and then add in my exercise? Or am I just supposed to set it at a higher activity level? Thanks again!

I prefer to keep myself at sedentary and then add exercise in. One of the reasons for that is because one day's exercise can be quite different from the next.

No.

Get a cheap step counter and wear it.
If you're consistently getting over 6000 steps a day? Switch to "light active"
Otherwise, stick with sedentary.
If you have a day when you really are much more active? Decide to eat closer to maintenance that day by hundred calories or so.