Calorie goals with pedometer

kkozinski22
kkozinski22 Posts: 3 Member
edited November 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
I have the Pacer app on my phone logging my steps throughout the day and my activity level set at Sedentary since I sit most of the day at work. If I exercise on the treadmill I keep my phone on me so it gets the steps from that as well. Let's say MFP says my goal should be 2000 calories and at the end of a day with no exercise Pacer says I burned 200 calories from walking throughout the day. Does that mean my total calorie intake should be 2200 to stay on the goal? Or does the 2000 calorie goal from MFP already take into account some guess work for random calories burned through the day? I assumed it was just calculating a BMR from your weight/height/age etc and removing a percentage based on the weight loss rate I want to achieve.

Replies

  • kkozinski22
    kkozinski22 Posts: 3 Member
    No ideas?
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,864 Member
    An activity level of "sedentary" is going to include some amount of walking and general activity...to my recollection a sedentary activity level includes up to around 5,000 steps worth of activity (note that doesn't mean just steps...but equivalent activity.

    Personally, I'd say that 200 calories from walking and general activity throughout the day are already included in your activity level. Your activity level is more than your BMR...BMR is the calories you expend merely existing in a coma.
  • kkozinski22
    kkozinski22 Posts: 3 Member
    Thanks. I just started so I'll see where I end up after a few weeks only logging purposeful exercise. I did notice that Pacer automatically "adjusted" my goal based on what it calculated I'd burn vs what MFP calculated (as in maybe I'm somewhere closer to light activity, not sedentary and it's trying to compensate for that based on my step count).
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,766 Member
    edited January 2017
    Do you know roughly how many steps you're getting? MFP seems to have sedentary set to correspond to about 3,000 steps/day (or equivalent). Lightly active seems to correspond to about 6,000 steps/day. So, unless you're over about 5,000 steps/day, you probably want to stick with sedentary as the best estimate.

    Since you usually burn about 100 extra calories per 2000 steps taken (very rough estimate), I'd say that "200 extra calories" probably corresponds to about 4,000 steps - which puts you firmly in the middle ground between sedentary and lightly active (but closer to sedentary).
This discussion has been closed.

Categories