Do you log your steps?

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  • etherealanwar
    etherealanwar Posts: 465 Member
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    My fitbit logs in steps into MFP and accounts for any added extra calories. I try not to eat the extra calories though.
  • saragd012
    saragd012 Posts: 693 Member
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    I wear a fitbit so it tracks for me, when I didn't have the fitbit I had my settings on "lightly-active" and just tracked intentional exercise but I should have had it on highly active because I was losing when I should have been maintaining. I find that the fitbit helps me maintain more reliably.
  • rainbow198
    rainbow198 Posts: 2,245 Member
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    No. I do have a tracker on my phone, but I only track fitness walking/running miles not daily steps. For me I don't count steps as exercise, it's just regular movement.
  • sgt1372
    sgt1372 Posts: 3,978 Member
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    I only log steps (and associated cals) for long walks/hikes beyond my normal activity level.
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,565 Member
    edited May 2018
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    I have my fitbit set to sync with MFP and MFP activity set to sedentary. My fitbit does a pretty accurate job of estimating calories burned for steps, and does differentiate between incidental steps, walking at a faster pace, running and cycling. I'm set to sedentary because I'm mildly OCD and was obsessing about getting the exact same amount of activity every day when I was set to active. This way I just let fitbit and MFP do all the work, and I eat back the calories to maintain my weight.

    eta: To clarify, I only manually log activities such as cycling on my trainer where steps aren't counted.
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
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    I have a very varied step count depending on how my day goes. Anywhere from 2000 steps to 15000+ steps.

    The way I've approached it is to set my activity to sedentary and let the number of steps recorded by my android wear watch dictate my activity level that day. I then adjust my calorie intake accordingly.

    Not sure if this is the smartest or wisest way to do it but it seems to be working for me so far.
  • babysaffy
    babysaffy Posts: 232 Member
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    I used to log them but I stopped a few weeks ago because I've been in a plateau,/ slow weight loss for a while and don't want to eat back any overestimated burned calories.

    Like others have said, it's all part of activity which we've already set to get our calorie goal so I feel like I was cheating to get more calories or a bigger deficit so my 5 week projected loss was inaccurate.
  • Semele0
    Semele0 Posts: 114 Member
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    Your steps should be counted as calories out, but there are many ways to do it:
    1) If you own a fitbit or similar, then it will calculate them for you just sync it with the app. You can either put your activity level on sedentary and let the fitbit do the rest (it will add calories everyday, if you move), or select an higher activity level (in this case probabliy most days your caloris will remain fixed, bu they can go up or down if you move more or less the you activity level)
    2) If you don't own a fitbit or similar but you do more or less the same amount of steps everyday, set your activity level accordingly
    3) You don't own a fitbit and don't move the same everyday. I'm in this category, I'm sedentary and most days I will not move much, but then others I will go for walks or just walk to places. It happens two or three times a week, so enogh to make a difference. I don't want to buy a fitbit, though, so I downloaded the app google fit and set it up, synced with MFP, and it calculates the step I'm doing. It is less exact then fitbit, so I don't eat all of the supposed calories back, but I prefer to have some monitoring of my activity if I can.
  • candistyx
    candistyx Posts: 547 Member
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    I log them in apple health because I want to increase them but I don't worry about adding calories for them.
  • cheryldumais
    cheryldumais Posts: 1,907 Member
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    I am set as sedentary so I do log my steps. This is my only intentional exercise right now and I have lost over 100 pounds. The trouble comes when people add their steps in to their activity level then log them again. You have to decide. I work at a desk job so I am sedentary. I walk on purpose to get my body moving.
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
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    I have a watch that doesn't sync, but I am okay with that because of what is working for me. I set my activity level to sedentary because I have an office job. I typically walk over 10000 steps though. One of my walks will usually be long at a brisk pace, like 5 miles at a 4+ mph pace. I use Map My Walk on my phone just for that kind of walking. I usually do some other fitness walking at a slightly slower pace and not as far. For example, yesterday I had almost 16000 steps. I logged about 9500 using MMW, which fed into mfp. My base is about 200 calories lower than mfp calculates. this sounds (and admittedly seems to me to be) rather inexact but my weight has been amazingly stable recently (I am in maintenance). Anyway, the point of all that is that if you use walking as a primary exercise, I think you should log the walking that is fitness walking but not all steps.
  • briscogun
    briscogun Posts: 1,135 Member
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    My phone tracks steps and pushes to MFP but I don't get any calorie adjustment unless its over 10,000 or something like that so its nice to see if I was up and around or if a loafed too much but other than that...? Steps don't really factor into my fitness goals so I don't focus on them. I did a mile and a half nature trail walk last weekend and I tracked that in my app but that was more for kicks (and because I wanted to burn a few calories so I could eat a baked potato for dinner!) :)
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    Danp wrote: »
    I have a very varied step count depending on how my day goes. Anywhere from 2000 steps to 15000+ steps.

    The way I've approached it is to set my activity to sedentary and let the number of steps recorded by my android wear watch dictate my activity level that day. I then adjust my calorie intake accordingly.

    Not sure if this is the smartest or wisest way to do it but it seems to be working for me so far.

    I do the same, just a Gamin watch. I've played around in the past and bumped my setting to lightly active, but then MFP takes calories away. The net is the same, but I didn't like losing calories so I went back to sedentary so I get the little adds from activity. On days I don't run I can be under 2500 steps. So I've had days when I lose calories even though I'm set at sedentary. Usually these are busy days at work (month-end and the like) when I'm on the computer for 8 hours and barely break for lunch.

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