Confused about logging exercise vs Activity Level

Activity and exercise are completely separate and distinct entities on here - one has no bearing on the other if you use the site as intended.

Activity = job and normal daily activity only, ignore purposeful exercise.

Take my son as an example:
He is a builder so Active if not Very Active, he also exercises a lot. He would log all his purposeful exercise on top of that activity setting

There is a common misconception that only sedentary setting means you should log exercise, you can see that would lead to my son not taking the considerable calorie needs of his job into account. You would be in the same situation as a bike messenger.

my activity level varies greatly day to day. so i set it at sedentary. some days i'll be lucky to get 2k steps. i bring snacks and drinks and books and chill in front of the tv. or sick days which i get due to underlying issues and then i get up for bathroom breaks and that's about the extent of my movement.
but i do yoga usually 3-4 a week and run 3-5 times a week. so i track those. and eat those calories back.

but if you are consistent in your activity level you can set it as a more active person

mr_jmac wrote: »

Hello,

I am new to myfitnesspal and counting calories. My job is a bike messenger and I also do a lot of sports in my free time so I chose "very active" as my activity level. Depending on your activity level the calories required to achieve your goal is adjusted.

For example my BMR is about 1800. If I choose "sedentary" then the calories stays at this number but if I chose very active it goes up to 2852. So your exercises are already builit into the logic.

So, my question is why do I also track my exercises because this also affects the calories required to achieve my goal??

Should I set the activity level to sedentary if I am tracking all of my exercise activity??

Confused ...

Thanks!

MFP uses the NEAT method...you will note that there is no mention of exercise in the activity level descriptors, only your day to day humdrum. Exercise is excluded with this method and because it is excluded, it is logged after the fact and additional calories are allotted to account for that otherwise unaccounted for activity.

In you situation, while biking is exercise, it is also your job so I would include that in my activity level. I'm a cycling enthusiast, but it doesn't have anything to do with my day to day activity level...I sit at a desk most of the day, so when I go for a ride that is a deliberate act of exercise so I would log it if I were doing the MFP NEAT method. As it stands, I go by the TDEE method where my exercise is in fact rolled up in my activity level and thus I wouldn't log it.

I would log all my "on the job" biking for a week or so, and see how many calories that is (use an app for that). If that matches what you'd get for selecting very active, I'd use that. If what you burn is way higher than that, I would factor that in when setting a goal.

Just remember that MFP is renown for over estimating calorie burn for exercise. As such most people only assume 50% of what the database gives them for activity.

The best way to work out what is accurate is to log everything, track your weight loss and work out what the discrepancies between what you should be losing (if your logging is 100% correct) and what what you're actually losing.

For me, for example, my rate of loss works out that I'm either under logging or over estimating my burn by about 100kcals a day. Considering I rarely log my drinks (booze, coffee with sugar, that sort of thing), I can account for that pretty easily. This means my adjustment for exercise is about correct (I take it as about 50-70% of what MFP gives me).

It might be wise, when you get enough data (1-2 months worth), to start doing that

Activity level = how active you are without dedicated workouts.

They are two different things. During the school year I'm moderately active as I do a lot of walking around campus with 30lbs of books & laptop. During the summer, I'm definitely sedentary. Even though my workouts stay the same. Exercise gets logged individually.