Retail work = lightly active?

It will depends how much you're moving around and whether you're on your feet, as some people who work in retail are sat on a checkout all day, whereas someone who is shelf-stacking would be considerably more active, if you have a smartphone that has the ability to count steps, it would be a good idea to track for a week and see how many you're getting in.

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It's probably lightly active as far as the number of steps, yes, but be sure you're not doubling up with your steps being counted (do you have an iPhone?) and/or are adding your steps in manually.

I don't work retail, but I do get seriously active at times and I both work out and hike regularly. I have myself set as inactive and then I add in all my exercise. It seems to work for me.

KwaziiNeko wrote: »

I work in retail 20-30 hours a weeks
I'm on my feet constantly, I wonder if this counts as lightly active?

Here's the MFP chart you would've seen when you set up your profile:
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, salesperson)
Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier)
Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)

Depending on the type of retail store, you're either Lightly Active - a good part of the day on your feet, or Active - physical activity (e.g. food server).

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

Sedentary: <5000 steps/day
Lightly Active: 5000-9999 steps/day
Active: 10,000-14,999 steps/day
Very Active: more than 15,000 steps/day

Get a cheap pedometer or free step counting app on a smart phone.

If you choose the right activity level, you don't log the steps as exercise; they've already been included (unless you pass ~20,000 steps/day; in that case, if you don't have a tracker synced, log only the steps over 20,000).

sorry off-topic-ish but I got my vivosmart HR connected to MFP and it adds my excercise calories, but I consistently get more than 10k per day. If I set my activity level to active (currently on sedentary), wouldnt MFP just up my calories and then still add the ones that garmin records?

BlueberryJoghurt wrote: »

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

Sedentary: <5000 steps/day
Lightly Active: 5000-9999 steps/day
Active: 10,000-14,999 steps/day
Very Active: more than 15,000 steps/day

Get a cheap pedometer or free step counting app on a smart phone.

If you choose the right activity level, you don't log the steps as exercise; they've already been included (unless you pass ~20,000 steps/day; in that case, if you don't have a tracker synced, log only the steps over 20,000).

sorry off-topic-ish but I got my vivosmart HR connected to MFP and it adds my excercise calories, but I consistently get more than 10k per day. If I set my activity level to active (currently on sedentary), wouldnt MFP just up my calories and then still add the ones that garmin records?

Not if it's synced properly. It it's synced properly (with negative adjustments enabled), it's mostly irrelevant which activity level you choose because MFP won't add any calories from the device until you've burned more than you're "supposed to" at your chosen activity level. Even on "sedentary", it won't start adding calories until after you get enough steps to get you up to the sedentary burn (usually about 2,000-3,000).

So, the only reasons to choose any particular activity level if you have a synced device are psychological - or if you go to bed really early (in which case, you should tend to pick a lower activity level so that MFP doesn't assume you'll be getting lots of physical activity after you go to bed).

I'm set to "active" and I typically only start to get positive adjustments somewhere in the 8,000-10,000 step range.