What does sedetary, lightly active, moderate activity levels look like in real life?

If you're talking about the MFP settings, none of them apply to training. The MFP formula is calculated based on activity exclusive of purposeful exercise. Whatever your training is would be added in separately and all or at least some of those calories added to your calorie target for the day.

My office job is sedentary, but if you're strictly talking about training I'd probably put myself in the highly active category. I lift weights and do yoga 3x/week, circuit training 2x/week, run 2-4x/week, and hike on the weekends when I get the chance.

For purposes of the MFP categories, I consider myself sedentary since that is my 'steady-state' throughout my day. I sit at a desk 6-8 hours a day, rarely moving, I commute a 90min round trip, I'm asleep 8-9 hours a day etc. Since more than 75% of my day is spent in an unmoving state, then I can't argue I'm anything but a slug.

In contrast, for awhile I had a job that I was on my feet moving all day. So I commuted a shorter commute, still slept 8 hours - but that was then only less than half my day sedentary so I said I was lightly active.

I'm trying to get back on the gym bandwagon right now, going 2x week to do HIIT training at OrangeTheory. I log that separately, and do not eat back those calories.

My Home > Goals > View Guided Setup

How would you describe your normal daily activities?

• 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)

I consider myself active. My job is about 50% on my feet, but outside of work I'm always running around with errands or helping my daughter build her bus home. I'm also carrying heavy stuff often and often up stairs. It's rare for me to sit around during the day. I almost never watch TV or even take a nap.

I also trail run, hike, and currently do bodyweight exercises and yoga.

Per MFP definitions, without considering intentional exercise, I'm probably on the lower border of lightly active
(6000-ish steps daily on average) during my outdoor rowing season (not counting the rowing; just that I move around more during that season), and fully sedentary during the off-season (2000 steps or less sometimes, very rarely over 5000). I'm retired, with sedentary hobbies (outside of exercise). MFP gives me a too-low calorie estimate at this level: I need to set at active (even though I'm not) in order for it to be close (still a little low for base calories). I then eat back all my exercise calories (mostly estimating them from my Garmin Vivoactive 3 exercise calories).

I usually work out 6 days a week (sometimes a little less in off-season, but still close, most of the time), and it's fairly vigorous. In season, I row on-water 4 days a week for around a hour, go to a spin class 2 days a week, and sometimes add other exercise-ish activities (bike rides, recreational walking, etc.). In the off-season, I still take the 2 spin classes, machine row one or more days (up to 6) usually for less than a hour (but quite intensely), and mix in some other random things (more likely to weight train in off-season, sometimes swim, etc.).

My non-exercise activity is just lackadaisical housekeeping chores, a little light garden/yard work in summer (rare day of heavy activity logged as exercise), and incidental walking related to shopping, social life, etc. I do hand-carry things that most people would wheel, and use the stairs in my house lots (groceries and everything need to be carried up a full flight).

If I use Sailrabbit to get a TDEE, and use "Very Active, Heavy Physical Work, Exercise or Sports 6 to 7 Days a Week" (which seems like an oversell, but I do work out 6 days a week, at decent intensity), the Harris-Benedict (old and new) estimates are a little low, and Mifflin St Jeor is even lower. If I add in my wild-guess body fat percent (if I believe my BIA scale, which is a LOL-worthy idea), the Katch-McArdle estimates are in the ballpark of realistic, Cunningham is a couple hundred calories or so high. My guess is that BF% really is somewhere mid-20s, but maybe higher than 26%: Upper body is fairly thin-looking, but waist down is definitely not.

FWIW, my Garmin's all-day calorie estimate is silly-low, pretty comparable to MFP's estimate at sedentary plus exercise.

In all cases, I'm assessing against experience from very nearly 4 years of careful MFP logging. I'm technically in maintenance, but usually eat at a small deficit most days, in order to splurge once a week or so.

I'm statistically weird, for some reason; I don't know why. (As a side note: I manually set my calories on MFP where they need to be, I don't actual use its "active" estimate.)

This is for 5'5", female, age 63, weight mid-130s (call it 135 for calculator estimate purposes), BIA scale says something like 26-point-something % body fat most days. I'm hypothyroid (but treated to the lower border of TSH), and my friends (I asked a couple of brutally honest ones) say I'm not fidgety generally, but tend to make big gestures when I talk. My eating is probably on the higher end of the TEF scale, but that should be a minor, minor factor.

FWIW . . . which is probably little, because - like I said - I seem to be odd.

When the trackers were first coming on line, and people were discovering they were getting more calories even though set to Sedentary on MFP with a deskjob/commute - it was a lot of people that had family/household duties when they came home - kids, pets, cleaning, long cooking as hobby, lawn/garden, ect.

Around 4K steps starting taking them out of Sedentary.
And when you average in the weekend NOT at work - most people that think they are Sedentary just because they have a desk job - really are Lightly Active.

I know what 4K steps is - 1 day a week I have all day desk job, with little to no walking, and then a 2 hr sit down later that evening, besides sitdown for dinner and relax before bed.
It is very sedentary.

So if you come home from long drive commute and long desk job and hit the TV or computer sitting all evening and weekend, no pets or kids or mate with those extra duties related to them - likely Sedentary.

I've seen some nurses depending on duties come in with enough moving distance they are Lightly-Active, others are doing more at Active level.

Powerclean2deadlift wrote: »

I'm more interested in where people place themselves and what that looks like day to day.

I have been more "active" in the past but I currently consider myself quite sedentary.

I'm retired, male, 68, 5'8" and am maintaining at 155# on about 1800 cals/day and about 270 cals burned rowing 5k meters/day and by limiting my eating schedule by doing 16:8 to 18:6 IF each day.

Apart from my rowing activity, I spend the rest of the day (apart from a few hrs when I'm out and about, walking here and there short distances from the car that I sat in to drive there) just sitting in a chair in front of my computer, a TV or stereo system, or while eating in my kitchen, a bar or a restaurant.

Exept for the rowing, I think that's about as sedentary as it gets.

Powerclean2deadlift wrote: »

COGypsy wrote: »

If you're talking about the MFP settings, none of them apply to training. The MFP formula is calculated based on activity exclusive of purposeful exercise. Whatever your training is would be added in separately and all or at least some of those calories added to your calorie target for the day.

No I'm not talking about that. Well I guess im talking about tdee and the different categories but I'm more interested in where people place themselves and what that looks like day to day.

MFP uses NEAT, non exercises activity thermogenesis, not TDEE, total daily exercise expenditure, so MFP activity categories do not apply to your question about TDEE.

Personally, I keep it as sedentary and allow syncing to do its job of balancing everything out.