Walking Around

I just use my Fitbit. i let it log my steps. I rarely eat exercise cal's though.

I use a fitbit and I eat most of my exercise calories. If I didn't have a fitbit and that was an unusual amount of walking then I would include it as exercise. I would probably only eat about half of the calories.

it is still exercise. your still burning calories. I makes a difference unless you are eating them all back

Going by what MFP says, I would burn 1411 calories in 6 hours walking at 2.5 mph and 951 walking at 2.0. If most of that time was standing in line or sitting down, I would log fewer, but that is probably balanced by times when you were dealing with extra weight and/or walking faster. Regardless, since your burn would be much higher than mine (I am assuming), it is a not-insubstantial amount of time spent moving a not-insubstantial amount of mass around. Personally I would eat them back (although I would cross-reference to my fitbit and Map My Walk), but I did not have a hard time losing my weight and am currently in maintenance at the middle of a healthy BMI; if I were struggling it might be a different story.

I don't count general daily walking (for instance, I usually get <6,000 or so steps on a day when I'm not actually trying to get more, or going to the gym) but if I'm walking for an extended period then I'll have more steps than usual and I'll count it. Sometimes step counts lie though, because you won't get as many steps when you're pushing a stroller, even though you're actually expending more energy... I took my 3 year-old niece to the zoo today, and pushed the stroller up and down the hills from about 9:30 until 2:00, and my tracker says I only have 3,200 steps for the day but my butt's feeling it a bit!

Maybe a good way to think of it is: if it makes your feet or legs sore at all then it's probably more effort than your usual, so it counts.

It definitely earned you some extra calories, which you could eat if you wanted to. Ultimately, what you do on one day is really not going to make a difference on your long term progress, so whether or not you decided to log it and eat the calories back isn't all that important. I would log it at least for curiosity's sake, but I'm a bit of a data geek

Is it more activity than you usually get or about the same?
I might log 30-60 minutes of slow walking if it were me.

When I run or lift I track those activities either through the sync with Strava or by adding manually. I don't eat the calories back though.

I also track steps/activity through an app on my phone which is always on me when I'm moving around. I disconnected this from MFP as I found it added to many extra calories.

On Sunday we also went to the amusement park. Between that, 3 walks for the dog and a quick run in the morning I did 29,087 steps. That's a decent amount of activity to push the deficit.

I have my fitbit synced to mfp as well and I have it set to sedentary. If I get at least 10,000 steps my TDEE goes from 1,690 to 2,200. You better believe I eat those extra calories, but I am also maintaining. Now if I do nothing all day and get around 4,000 steps my TDEE stays around 1,700 calories.

Deeznuts47 wrote: »

I always track my steps for overall health purposes -- if I go for a "ruck" or incline walking, I would count that as exercise. General day-to-day steps for me are just part of staying active.

This. Walking is often described as exercise, but it barely qualifies unless you're going at a vigorous pace, up a steep incline, or carrying a good amount of extra weight. In most cases, it's just normal activity.