Choosing the correct activity level
honkytonks85
Posts: 669 Member
Found this and thought it was actually useful:
When you have to find out how many calories you burn in a day, you put your info in a calculator and it undoubtedly asks for your activity level. So what do you choose? Here are the meaning of the activity levels:
Sedentary
If you’re sedentary, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
No moderate of vigorous activities.
Unless you do at least 30 minutes per day of intentional exercise, you are considered sedentary.
Spending most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
The majority of people will be considered sedentary.
Lightly Active
If you’re lightly active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 30 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 130-160 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time to achieve the same goal. For example, 15-20 minutes of vigorous activity, such as aerobics, skiing or jogging on a daily basis would put you in this category.
Spending a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
Active
If you’re active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 1 hour and 45 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 470-580 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time. For example, jogging for 50 minutes per day.
Spending a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
Very Active
If you’re very active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 4 hours and 15 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 1,150-1400 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time. For example, jogging for 2 hours minutes per day.
Spending most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
SOURCE: http://antranik.org/proper-activity-level-for-calorie-intake/
When you have to find out how many calories you burn in a day, you put your info in a calculator and it undoubtedly asks for your activity level. So what do you choose? Here are the meaning of the activity levels:
Sedentary
If you’re sedentary, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
No moderate of vigorous activities.
Unless you do at least 30 minutes per day of intentional exercise, you are considered sedentary.
Spending most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
The majority of people will be considered sedentary.
Lightly Active
If you’re lightly active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 30 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 130-160 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time to achieve the same goal. For example, 15-20 minutes of vigorous activity, such as aerobics, skiing or jogging on a daily basis would put you in this category.
Spending a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
Active
If you’re active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 1 hour and 45 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 470-580 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time. For example, jogging for 50 minutes per day.
Spending a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
Very Active
If you’re very active, your daily activities include:
Activities of daily living only, such as shopping, cleaning, watering plants, taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the lawn and gardening.
Daily exercise that is equal to walking for 4 hours and 15 minutes at 4mph. For an adult of average weight, this amount of exercise will burn about 1,150-1400 additional calories.
More intense exercise can be performed for less time. For example, jogging for 2 hours minutes per day.
Spending most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)
SOURCE: http://antranik.org/proper-activity-level-for-calorie-intake/
24
Replies
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Thank you
2 -
When in doubt put it down a level? So if you think you might be lightly active put it on sedatary.
Seems the safe bet to me11 -
thank you guess i am not as active as i thought2
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MFP activity levels don't include any exercise, just the activities of daily life. If you do use your exercise to put yourself at a higher activity level on MFP, don't log exercise and eat those calories back, as you'll be double-dipping.25
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Okay so I'm a stay at home mom. And most of the day I'm home cleaning and playing with my son but I do go to the gym mon-fri for about 1.5 to 2 hours. So am I considered light activity? Or sedentary? Thank you.1
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janejellyroll wrote: »MFP activity levels don't include any exercise, just the activities of daily life. If you do use your exercise to put yourself at a higher activity level on MFP, don't log exercise and eat those calories back, as you'll be double-dipping.
Exactly my thoughts!
Great advice!4 -
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If you can walk the dog, mow the lawn, and garden, and remain sedentary, I think you must have a very small dog, a lawn of astroturf, and a window garden.
Other than that, it looks pretty right to me. Thanks for the post!30 -
Or, choose sedentary, and then carefully track your actual activity.7
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I need some advice. I don't know what my lifestyle is, even after reading some blog responses online. I am a teenage male who is consuming 1500 calories, I walk briskly every morning with my dogs before school and participate in cross country and track- so I'm running or cross training every day after school. I can also run half marathons. I had it set as "Lightly Active" becuase I sit in school but felt like I was eating way too much. So am I "Active" or "Very Active"?0
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jacobchapman518 wrote: »I need some advice. I don't know what my lifestyle is, even after reading some blog responses online. I am a teenage male who is consuming 1500 calories, I walk briskly every morning with my dogs before school and participate in cross country and track- so I'm running or cross training every day after school. I can also run half marathons. I had it set as "Lightly Active" becuase I sit in school but felt like I was eating way too much. So am I "Active" or "Very Active"?
Choose an activity level that reflects your activity before additional exercise and then log your exercise in MFP. If you set it as "Lightly Active" and give it a few weeks, you can use the data from your results (are you losing/gaining faster than expected?) to adjust if you need to.
1,500 calories is the lowest recommended for a male. Did you get that goal from MFP?2 -
Is a nurse (senior's residence) sedentary, lightly active or active? I.e. I log on average 10kms a shift - will that count as exercise or lifestyle?0
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heathervallon wrote: »Is a nurse (senior's residence) sedentary, lightly active or active? I.e. I log on average 10kms a shift - will that count as exercise or lifestyle?
In MFP terms, anything related to your job is lifestyle -- not exercise. If you're walking 10km per shift, it's certainly not sedentary.2 -
jacobchapman518 wrote: »I need some advice. I don't know what my lifestyle is, even after reading some blog responses online. I am a teenage male who is consuming 1500 calories, I walk briskly every morning with my dogs before school and participate in cross country and track- so I'm running or cross training every day after school. I can also run half marathons. I had it set as "Lightly Active" becuase I sit in school but felt like I was eating way too much. So am I "Active" or "Very Active"?
1500 calories is way too low for a teenage male. You're still growing.3 -
heathervallon wrote: »Is a nurse (senior's residence) sedentary, lightly active or active? I.e. I log on average 10kms a shift - will that count as exercise or lifestyle?
Definitely not "sedentary" or "lightly active". Probably "active". And I'd call that "lifestyle" rather than "exercise".
I'm set to "active" with FitBit tweaking my calories. If I only get 10,000 steps in a day (8 km for me), I break even and "active" is the correct setting. Usually, I get between 15,000 and 25,000 steps and "very active" isn't high enough.
IMO, the easiest way to estimate your activity level is to find a cheap pedometer and wear it for a week or two, recording your total number of steps every day.
"Sedentary" is less than 4,000 steps/day
"Lightly active" is about 4,000-10,000 steps/day
"Active" is about 10,000-16,000 steps/day
"Very active" is more than 16,000 steps/day
If you're right at the bottom of a range, you might want to choose the range below to allow for a few inaccuracies in logging.9 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »IMO, the easiest way to estimate your activity level is to find a cheap pedometer and wear it for a week or two, recording your total number of steps every day.
"Sedentary" is less than 4,000 steps/day
"Lightly active" is about 4,000-10,000 steps/day
"Active" is about 10,000-16,000 steps/day
"Very active" is more than 16,000 steps/day
If you're right at the bottom of a range, you might want to choose the range below to allow for a few inaccuracies in logging.
MFP defines
sedentary = BMR x 1.25
ligtly active = BMR x 1.4
active = BMR x 1.6
very active = BMR x 1.8
Most people get "positive adjustments" i.e. extra calories, when their activity levels exceed:
sedentary ~ 3500 steps
lightly active ~ 7500 steps
active ~ 12,500 steps
very active ~15500 steps
MFP expects you to log any "exercise" that is not part of your base activity.
While in many respects it makes sense to split things into "base activity of daily living" and "deliberate exercise" there is nothing magical about how the calories got burned.
The only thing that matters is that you don't under or over count.
Note that sedentary means... sedentary. It represents an activity level that involves less than 35 minutes of movement in a day. MOST people on MFP who think of themselves as sedentary... AREN'T. (and, of course, some people who DON'T, ARE. but that's another story).7 -
I stopped reading at the definition of sedentary because that's wrong8
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That's pretty close to the definitions I've read in research articles that put accelerators on people and measure their activity. Americans, especially, are *really* sedentary and tend to significantly overestimate their activity levels. Puttering around the house and moseying down the block with the dog aren't enough to lift you out of "sedentary" if you're the average suburban car-owning American.
A lot of "why am I not losing anything" posts on MFP could be answered with "You called yourself 'moderately active' because your parking spot is 500 feet from the door, and then you're still logging your 30 minute exercise class on top of that."3 -
So If I am using an activity tracker (Like Jawbone, Fitbit or Apple Watch) - should I set my activity level at "sedentary" and let the steps from the activity tracker make the adjustments? (In addition to adding whatever vigorous activity I might be doing (like weightlifting) that the tracker can't track very well?)0
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Yes, exactly. I have mine set at sedentary, and then use Google Fit. It usually bumps it up a couple hundred calories, because even with a desk job I'll walk 4-5,000 steps a day.So If I am using an activity tracker (Like Jawbone, Fitbit or Apple Watch) - should I set my activity level at "sedentary" and let the steps from the activity tracker make the adjustments? (In addition to adding whatever vigorous activity I might be doing (like weightlifting) that the tracker can't track very well?)
MFP doesn't cound weight lifting toward activity calories. I fake it with kettlebells because they're so cardio intense (and it seems to be fine with my rate of loss).
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These definitions are NOT ACCURATE for MFP's method. You should not count purposeful exercise as part of the activity level for MFP, which uses the NEAT method of calculation. Exercise is logged in addition to the base calorie burn, so you don't want to double count it in both the activity level and exercise logging.
If using the TDEE method of calculation, then you should include purposeful exercise in the activity level, but don't log exercise cals in addition.
Sorry, I don't have time to explain these two methods in detail, but there are lots of explanations here on MFP.3 -
So If I am using an activity tracker (Like Jawbone, Fitbit or Apple Watch) - should I set my activity level at "sedentary" and let the steps from the activity tracker make the adjustments? (In addition to adding whatever vigorous activity I might be doing (like weightlifting) that the tracker can't track very well?)
As long as you check the "negative adjustments enabled" button, it doesn't matter which activity level you pick if you have an activity tracker synced. I prefer to choose the activity level that most closely mirrors my actual lifestyle (admittedly, it's a bit of an underestimate, but it means I don't have to look at an absurdly low calorie goal first thing in the morning). Others prefer to start at "sedentary". By the end of the day, the result will be the same regardless of the activity level you chose.3 -
I'm confused why fit bit steps earns me more calories then if mfp already calculates how many calories I need by being "sedentary". It seems like I am earning way too many calories just from daily walking and I already set my activity level to sedentary.0
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janejellyroll wrote: »MFP activity levels don't include any exercise, just the activities of daily life. If you do use your exercise to put yourself at a higher activity level on MFP, don't log exercise and eat those calories back, as you'll be double-dipping.
I was going to say the same thing. If you want your calorie goal on MFP to be accurate you do not include intended exercise, only normal daily activity.1 -
I'm confused why fit bit steps earns me more calories then if mfp already calculates how many calories I need by being "sedentary". It seems like I am earning way too many calories just from daily walking and I already set my activity level to sedentary.
If fitbit and MFP are both set at sedentary, those extra calories are ones you have burned beyond being sedentary.3 -
I'm confused why fit bit steps earns me more calories then if mfp already calculates how many calories I need by being "sedentary". It seems like I am earning way too many calories just from daily walking and I already set my activity level to sedentary.
Calorie burns are always estimates. Different programs by different manufacturers use different methods of estimating.1 -
I'm confused why fit bit steps earns me more calories then if mfp already calculates how many calories I need by being "sedentary". It seems like I am earning way too many calories just from daily walking and I already set my activity level to sedentary.
How many steps do you get per day? MFP's definition of "sedentary" is about 3,000 steps/day. If you get more than that, FitBit will adjust your calorie burn upward to account for the extra steps. By how much depends on height, weight and age, but expect roughly 100 calories for every extra 2,000 steps.0 -
I am pretty sedentary the most of the day. I mostly do house chores or play with my dog, but I do go to the gym for an hour and a half to two hours. I'd still fall under sedentary, right? I do this 5 days a week (and usually long walks on the weekend).0
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I'm confused why fit bit steps earns me more calories then if mfp already calculates how many calories I need by being "sedentary". It seems like I am earning way too many calories just from daily walking and I already set my activity level to sedentary.
Calorie burns are always estimates. Different programs by different manufacturers use different methods of estimating.
not so much ...a lot of programs/manufacturers use Met Values..0
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