Activity level if working desk job?

Your activity level does not include exercise. That is seperate. You are supposed to log that seperstely and eat back the calories you burn on the days you do exercise.

I have a desk job, and I choose lightly active because I usually get at least 5000 steps of non exercise activity a day.

A desk job doesn't automatically mean a sedentary lifestyle, that's too simplistic - your job is just part (a major part if working full time) of your overall activity level.

I was easily in the Lightly Activity category with a full time desk job due to the amount of movement/activity I built into a typical working day plus evenings and weekends. You will have to judge for yourself but a pedometer/step counting app might give you a rough idea. A typical desk working day for me was 6,000 steps for example.

Your exercise is absolutely nothing to do with your activity setting on MyFitnessPal. Otherwise if you included exercise in your acivity setting and then logged it after the event with those calories added to that day's allowance you would be double counting.

butterfly_2019 wrote: »

I was thinking the same actually - I have a desk job but do between 11k - 13k steps per day and this comes from the 45 minute walk to school/work in the mornings and a 30 minute walk home in the evenings plus any movement I do during my work day.

I put I was Lightly Active - is this OK? This gave me a 1520 calorie goal (35yrs, 5ft3in, 12st 2lb)

Yes, lightly active would be ok. Try that setting for a few weeks and see how your progress is going and adjust from there. Also, add in any purposeful exercise you do

butterfly_2019 wrote: »

I was thinking the same actually - I have a desk job but do between 11k - 13k steps per day and this comes from the 45 minute walk to school/work in the mornings and a 30 minute walk home in the evenings plus any movement I do during my work day.

I put I was Lightly Active - is this OK? This gave me a 1520 calorie goal (35yrs, 5ft3in, 12st 2lb)

That's most probably too low a setting but as pointed out it's a start point - from which you can adjust based on your actual weight loss (and energy levels) over an extended period of time.

I don't even work, live in a tiny condo with very little daily necessary activity. I am set at Active. Don't know why, but that's the calorie level I need to maintain my weight. I found the levels to be way too low. If I used Sedentary (which I basically am sedentary by the description) I would be given 500 calories less.

Bottom line for everyone is: log carefully, learn how to log food accurately and then run that experiment on how much YOU really need. Give it 4-6 weeks of data collection to get good trending data.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1

carofdiego wrote: »

For those of you who work desk jobs and exercise regularly, what activity level do you choose on the Guided Setup? These are the options they give:

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 work an office job and try to get up and move around when I remember to, and I also do intense exercise about 4 days a week (HIIT, weight, parkour). Not sure which option to choose if I'm going from sedentary in the day to active starting in the late afternoon. For now I'm choosing active.

With MFP your activity level doesn't include purposeful exercise. You log it after the fact and get additional calories to account for that activity. It's something you'll likely have to play with. When I was losing weight I had initially set it to sedentary because I have a desk job but I was losing faster than expected. I was more lightly active because I do get up and down and move around quite a bit at the office, plus at the time I had a 2 year old and new born at home and there wasn't much just sittin' around chillin' once I got home from the office.

Do you spend most of you time sitting at a desk? If so, you should choose the option “spends most of the day sitting at the desk”.

sijomial wrote: »

A desk job doesn't automatically mean a sedentary lifestyle, that's too simplistic - your job is just part (a major part if working full time) of your overall activity level.

I was easily in the Lightly Activity category with a full time desk job due to the amount of movement/activity I built into a typical working day plus evenings and weekends. You will have to judge for yourself but a pedometer/step counting app might give you a rough idea. A typical desk working day for me was 6,000 steps for example.

Your exercise is absolutely nothing to do with your activity setting on MyFitnessPal. Otherwise if you included exercise in your acivity setting and then logged it after the event with those calories added to that day's allowance you would be double counting.

This, this, this.

I work at a desk, at home. However, there are CONSISTENT daily parts of my life that move my activity level up. I live three flights of stairs from the street, another flight to my porch, and one more from living room to bathroom/kitchen in my house (and my desk is downstairs). I own 5 high energy herding breeds with exercise needs. I train my dogs and other people's dogs - shorter session daily, longer ones multiple times a week. ,

You combine all of that with 'to and from the car' 'carrying groceries' 'in and out of the house 4-5 times a day' and even just 'the walk to go pee' and I'm far surpassing the threshold of sedentary. None of what I do is 'exercise' or, honestly, particularly loggable - I log trail runs, longer or unusual hikes, paddleboarding, horseback riding, or whatever other above and beyond thing I do - but my LIFE is not really possible to log - how does one log '15 minutes of running from a dog in 35 second intervals to make them come to you' or 'sprinted 30 seconds of an agility course 3 times', or 'got the mail, did 5 flights of stairs at a jog' or- whatever? Maybe with a fitness tracker, but I don't have one of those and it's pain.

But it ain't sedentary, regardless of my day job being in front of a computer.

@ValerieMorenoFGUn

Did you pick up that your gym visits are absolutely no part of your activity setting if using MFP as designed?

@yirara

Hi, Sheepie. I think that antonia only came on here to advertise his/her money making scheme. Just a guess...