Am I lightly active or active?
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AngieC1994
Posts: 10 Member
In the app I set it up as lightly active, it set me at 1,620 calories. If I change it to active it gives me 1,920. But I don't know which one I am? I have an active job, on my feet moving boxes in a warehouse (FedEx) for 3-4 hours 5 days a week, I also workout after that (mix of FitnessBlender cardio and body weight routines). Most weeks I workout 6 days with one rest day. But since I work early morning, I'm active from about 4am-10am, then I usually spend the rest of the day sitting doing school. I feel like this would active instead of lightly active but I don't want to be eating too much.
If it matters, female, 22, weigh about 160.
If it matters, female, 22, weigh about 160.
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Replies
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Start with lightly active and eat the 1620 plus a portion of your exercise calories. Evaluate your loss over the next 4-6 weeks and if you lose faster than expected, move up to active.2
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You sound active to me, but if I were unsure, I'd just manually adjust he calorie goal to the average of the two numbers and adjust as needed after a couple weeks.0
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Mezzie1024 wrote: »You sound active to me, but if I were unsure, I'd just manually adjust he calorie goal to the average of the two numbers and adjust as needed after a couple weeks.
That's a good idea! I'll try that, thank you.
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Your exercise does not count on MFP when you are setting your activity level because MFP intends you to add exercise to your exercise diary and then get calories added to your daily allotment based on the exercise activity, duration, etc. ... (cardio exercises). It really is based on your daytime activities such as do you walk all day because you are a postman or do you sit all day because you work an office-type job. Whatever you choose, remember that it is common and natural for people to underestimate how much they eat and overestimate how active they are. ... so try a setting, go with it for a month and see what the results were, then you can tweak or change the settings. ....
.... and, it's not really a day-by-day thing with weight change because it takes time for your body to digest and use the food you consumed today ... it's really what happens over a period of time. .... so consistency is the key.3 -
MFP expects you to add your exercise separately.
Your warehouse job would probably qualify you as active or very active.
Four hours of active walking a day blows through MFP's activity settings past very active.
Partially it depends if you work in place or move around the warehouse a lot.
But handling boxes also adds to the activity load.
As such I would not consider anything below active.
Exercise is separate.
Unless you have a large amount of weight to lose huge deficits may not be appropriate for your needs.
With this amount of activity (i.e. high TDEE) and a smaller deficit. measuring your progress becomes an issue.
Patience, trending weight apps, careful measurement, and pictures are probably your friends.
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Light active for work, then log your workouts separately.0
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TavistockToad wrote: »Light active for work, then log your workouts separately.
3-4 hours a day of moving boxes in a Fed ex warehouse is "lightly" active?0 -
MFP expects you to add your exercise separately.
Your warehouse job would probably qualify you as active or very active.
Four hours of active walking a day blows through MFP's activity settings past very active.
Partially it depends if you work in place or move around the warehouse a lot.
But handling boxes also adds to the activity load.
As such I would not consider anything below active.
Exercise is separate.
Unless you have a large amount of weight to lose huge deficits may not be appropriate for your needs.
With this amount of activity (i.e. high TDEE) and a smaller deficit. measuring your progress becomes an issue.
Patience, trending weight apps, careful measurement, and pictures are probably your friends.
I rarely ever add my exercise into MFP, unless it's something like swimming or if go for a run, because I don't know how many calories I burn doing the FitnessBlender workouts, I just know they make me work and feel good lol
But I definitely get a lot of movement and lifting in at work. Mezzie1024 recommended averaging the two numbers MFP gave me, so I manually set it to 1,800, will keep up with this for a few weeks and see how I feel.0 -
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You can adjust whether to add exercise to your calorie count. I'd set yours to active & exclude exercise to the count to see how you go. I think there is a guide on the categories on the website. My understanding is lightly active is if you have a physical job but don't exercise, or you have a sedentary job but exercise 4-5 times a week. Very active is up there with the elite/competitive/professional training.0
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TavistockToad wrote: »Light active for work, then log your workouts separately.
3-4 hours a day of moving boxes in a Fed ex warehouse is "lightly" active?
Since it isn't a full eight hours, that's why I recommended lightly active0 -
TavistockToad wrote: »Light active for work, then log your workouts separately.
3-4 hours a day of moving boxes in a Fed ex warehouse is "lightly" active?
Since it isn't a full eight hours, that's why I recommended lightly active
We obviously have a different evaluation of what exhausts mfp's lightly vs active vs very active setting.
From personal experience 4 hours of purposeful walking exceeds very active which is only a multiplier of 1.8
Lightly active is achieved with as little as 1.5 hours of non sedentary activity.
4 hours of moving boxes at a guess would be similar to four hours of purposeful walking....
A simple pedometer would answer a lot of the OP's questions.
If she uses her phone and is hitting north of 7500 steps she is past lightly active. Past 12.5k she is past active.
Again, of course, the results will vary based on intake logging and how close to average she is.
Adjusting after a few weeks is the right thing to do.
Aiming to meet as opposed to exceed targets is also not necessarily the wrong thing to do, especially if the OP is not obese.
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TavistockToad wrote: »Light active for work, then log your workouts separately.
3-4 hours a day of moving boxes in a Fed ex warehouse is "lightly" active?
Since it isn't a full eight hours, that's why I recommended lightly active
We obviously have a different evaluation of what exhausts mfp's lightly vs active vs very active setting.
From personal experience 4 hours of purposeful walking exceeds very active which is only a multiplier of 1.8
Lightly active is achieved with as little as 1.5 hours of non sedentary activity.
4 hours of moving boxes at a guess would be similar to four hours of purposeful walking....
A simple pedometer would answer a lot of the OP's questions.
If she uses her phone and is hitting north of 7500 steps she is past lightly active. Past 12.5k she is past active.
Again, of course, the results will vary based on intake logging and how close to average she is.
Adjusting after a few weeks is the right thing to do.
Aiming to meet as opposed to exceed targets is also not necessarily the wrong thing to do, especially if the OP is not obese.
Not allowed to take my phone into work anymore, but I have before and it's definitely upwards of 7,500 steps. I should look into getting a pedometer though, used to use a Fitbit but it wasn't very accurate because sometimes I'd be standing still but using my arms a lot and it thought I was walking, the thing was telling me to eat like 3,000 calories a day lol
Also, not obese, just don't want to be overeating or eating too little (couldn't keep myself accountable with 1600 because I was still so hungry).
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I would try using a weight tracking app like happy scale and log every day for a few weeks - it gives you a moving average of your weight loss so you can see over time what your loss per week is - mine is settling at 1.6 lbs per week and mfp is set at 1 lb per week loss so I assume I'm more then 'lightly active' by the mfp definition (I walk children to school and back each day and am often on my feet around the house, doing shopping etc - usually around 12000 steps or more.0
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I've done warehouse work like that before, and I ended up buying new clothes within a month, including a pair of jeans that I only got back into last week!
Go with Active. If you scrupulously log and don't lose weight at all, then reduce it to lightly active, but I bet you won't have to!0 -
As you are purposefully under logging your exercise then would suggest start with the higher activity level and trial that amount for a month.
Then adjust calorie goal manually based on results.
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