Choosing Activity Level

I am a stay-at-home and I homeschool. I do spend a lot of time sitting outside of doing chores etc. I made it a goal recently to get 10k a day, so I try to make sure I get 1000 steps an hour during the day, and then I take a 20 minute walk in the evening. I'm not sure if I should choose sedentary or lightly active for my activity level.

Replies

  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    Do you have an activity tracker of some sort (Fitbit, Garmin, etc)? If so, easiest thing is to sync it to MFP and let it do the work for you.

    Otherwise, activity level is meant to be set to activity outside of deliberate exercise, and exercise (like your 20 min walk) logged separately. All up with 10k steps you'd actually class as active. It's really up to you whether you set yourself as lightly active then log your walk, or just set to active. You are most definitely not sedentary though (MFP's sedentary setting is below 3000-3500 steps a day).
  • hookandy
    hookandy Posts: 278 Member
    I set mine to sedentary and use Fitbit to adjust. Looking back a few weeks my lose pretty much matches the figures in MFP so it does work. If no tracker set to active and see if the figures match in a couple of weeks, then adjust.
  • gentledreams
    gentledreams Posts: 10 Member
    I also set mine to sedentary and use Fitbit to adjust. I average 7k steps a day before going to the gym but I have an office job so I felt it appropriate to set the activity level to sedentary, and in general just from a psychological point of view I find it a lot more satisfying to see my calorie allowance going up during the day (whether I eat all the calories or not) when I sync my Fitbit, it encourages me to move more.
  • serindipte
    serindipte Posts: 1,557 Member
    I also set mine to sedentary and use Fitbit to adjust. I average 7k steps a day before going to the gym but I have an office job so I felt it appropriate to set the activity level to sedentary, and in general just from a psychological point of view I find it a lot more satisfying to see my calorie allowance going up during the day (whether I eat all the calories or not) when I sync my Fitbit, it encourages me to move more.

    I recently upped my setting to lightly active, but the bolded part above is very true for me, as well. I love watching that number move up as I go about my day. The reason I changed to lightly active is that, at sedentary, the number went up more easily and I wanted to get moving more... so made it more difficult for myself to get the change going.