Question about activity level

Your activity level is intended to be your average day-to-day stuff. Purposeful exercise is intended to be logged separately and the calories eaten back.

Wait... what? 2 hours of cardio daily? Are you training for an event?

MileHigh4Wheeler wrote: »

Sounds like you should choose the sedentary category rather than active. That computation is trying to determine your BMR, the baseline to recommend how many calories your body needs if you just laid still for 24 hours, if you say you have an active job and it changes that BMR then you might end up consuming more calories than you should as a result.

Disagree. The calculation is trying to determine NEAT, not BMR.

The walk to from work should be considered as should other normal activities. Only the purposeful exercise is not counted, but added back when done. At least the way MFP does the calculation.

I'd guess lightly active to active. If you don't lose as expected at the active level, reduce it.

I would say yes.

Your walking to and from work IS part of your daily activity, so is all the walking around you do at work.

Leave it at Active for two months while you log food as accurately as possible every day. At the end of that two months you'll know within a couple hundred calories (the margin of error) exactly where you need to be calorie-wise.

As an example, I am retired and live in a tiny condo so not much daily activity is in my day. I used to be set at Sedentary, because I truly believed I was sedentary. I logged my exercise and ate back those calories too. But the Sedentary setting is way too low for me. In order to get the results I expect (as reflected in the numbers I collected) I need to be set at Active.

I'm not by any definition "active." But by doing the experiment I dialed it in. The activity levels are a starting point. You still have to run the experiment on yourself, like we all do. Some people will have the complete opposite results and may have to eat a bit less, or not eat all the exercise calories.

julielunk94 wrote: »

Would you eat back the calories that you have burned during purposeful exercise? I thought the purpose of exercising was to not eat back the calories..? If I need educating please do so .

With how MFP structures, yes, because the exercise is not included in your daily baseline.

If you use TDEE like the calculator you posted, then you do not eat them back because it is included.

You need to fuel your activity to workout effectively.

julielunk94 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

If you want to roll up exercise into your activity level, you should use a TDEE calculator and customize your calorie target here. A TDEE calculator will use a different algorithm to include your exercise.

MFP is a NEAT method calculator where your activity level is your day to day where purposeful exercise is accounted for when you log it after the fact and get additional calories.

If you want to use the MFP method, I'd probably pick light active or whatever the one right above sedentary is since walking is part of your daily commute. If you want to include exercise in your activity level and calorie target, use a TDEE calculator and manually customize your target here.

Yep I already have used a TDEE calculator but I think it seems a bit high (see below):

Honestly, I think the estimate seems low, considering you are already considered "active" and are adding in 2 hours of daily cardio on top of it. No way to know for sure except to pick a method and stick with it for 4-6 weeks and see how your real-life results compare.

julielunk94 wrote: »

Would you eat back the calories that you have burned during purposeful exercise? I thought the purpose of exercising was to not eat back the calories..? If I need educating please do so .

Again, this depends on the method.

With MFP, exercise isn't included in your activity level and thus isn't accounted for in your weight loss calorie target. Doing a bunch of exercise like 2 hours of cardio on top of what is already a deficit is just going to make that deficit bigger, and often too big for healthy and safe weight loss.

With a TDEE calculator, you include exercise and thus additional calories are included in your weight loss target.

Either way, you are "eating back" or otherwise accounting for exercise activity.

As an example...if I use MFP to lose 1 Lb per week I'll get a calorie target of around 2,000 given that my non exercise maintenance calories are around 2500. If I go on a two hour bike ride I'll burn in the neighborhood of 900 to 1000 calories. If I ate 2,000 and burned off 1,000 I would have a net intake of 1,000 calories which would essentially be the same thing as eating 1,000 calories which no adult male has any business doing.

As it is, my rides are usually about an hour and I burn around 450-500 calories in that time...so if I ate back those 500 calories on top of my 2,000 I would eat a total of 2500 calories...but I'd still lose 1 Lb per week because my maintenance calories without exercise go from 2500 to 3000 calories with exercise...so I still have a 500 calorie deficit.

If I use a TDEE calculator and include my regular exercise in my activity level I get right around 3000 calories as my maintenance...so I would just eat 2500 to be in a 1 Lb per week deficit.

6 of 1, half dozen of the other.

The trick is accurately estimating your activity level. Things like "strenuous" are subjective...and there's a pretty big range of hours from 7-21. It's something you have to tinker with and be as honest with yourself as you can be. Is it really "strenuous" or is it just difficult for you...one person's "strenuous" is another persons "easy"...that's why it's subjective.