Can I consider myself "Active" if I'm Cycling/Walking 45 mins, 3-4 times a week?
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Ferd2001
Posts: 2 Member
Hi there I'm still starting and I'm a bit confused if I should consider myself as "Active" or "Lightly Active" I'm doing Cycling or Walking (depends on our mood) 3-4 times a week approximately 45-60mins. Thanks a lot open for all answers!
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Replies
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Your activity level is determined by how active you are in daily life, not counting exercise.
So this depends on your job, house work, how much you move outside of intentional exercise (for example walking to work), etc.
Exercise should be added separately in MFP: you should log your exercise and then you will have extra calories to consume on those days.17 -
If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.8
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Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.
Yep. Me too. In fact that's exactly what I do.
I add the exercise in separately.5 -
I like seeing the gift of extra calories when I do make the effort of working out... So I use sedentary and then watch my food allowance grow from the work I put in.6
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As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
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Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.kshama2001 wrote: »As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
It's not just our jobs we should consider, we need to consider all activity that isn't intentional exercise.
I have a desk job and I am far from sedentary: I take at least 6000 steps a day by walking to and from the train station to go to work, for example. I'm a horrible housewife, but on days I actually do housework
my steps are higher too (multi-level house).
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Hi there I'm still starting and I'm a bit confused if I should consider myself as "Active" or "Lightly Active" I'm doing Cycling or Walking (depends on our mood) 3-4 times a week approximately 45-60mins. Thanks a lot open for all answers!
Nah that would be sedentary unless you are doing other additional stuff during the day.0 -
I cycle as well and only change my activity to active once I work up to cycling over 3 hours a day at least 5 days a week. Otherwise, I keep it at sedentary and add in the exercise. At that point, a large part of my day involves cycling and if I just add in calories, I find it's too high. So I set my calories higher but I DON'T add in any exercise calories. Btw, I have found that cycling burns WAY fewer calories than most people think. It takes a massive amount of kms to overcome the extra fuel needed to maintain a your distance and still lose weight.2
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Most people seem to discover after they get an activity tracker that even with a desk job they are hardly Sedentary outside of exercise - they have family and household responsibilities that when you throw in the weekend is Lightly-Active easily.
And then exercise is extra per MFP method on top of that.11 -
I actual discovered the opposite from my fitness tracker and from enabling negative calorie adjustments. Outside of my dedicated exercise, I seem to struggle to avoid negative calories when my tracker syncs to MFP. It was eye opening and it’s prompting me to move more outside my workouts.
I don’t think my fitness tracker (Garmin) has it quite right though, I set my calorie target to lose half a pound a week and I’ve been losing a full pound/week. And I often go over on calories. After I get to goal weight I’ll figure out the right combo.
But to answer OP’s question, set it to sedentary.2 -
Lanabanana42 wrote: »I cycle as well and only change my activity to active once I work up to cycling over 3 hours a day at least 5 days a week. Otherwise, I keep it at sedentary and add in the exercise. At that point, a large part of my day involves cycling and if I just add in calories, I find it's too high. So I set my calories higher but I DON'T add in any exercise calories. Btw, I have found that cycling burns WAY fewer calories than most people think. It takes a massive amount of kms to overcome the extra fuel needed to maintain a your distance and still lose weight.
Bikes are one of the most energy efficient forms of transportation that exist, and calories are a measure of energy.2 -
Hi there I'm still starting and I'm a bit confused if I should consider myself as "Active" or "Lightly Active" I'm doing Cycling or Walking (depends on our mood) 3-4 times a week approximately 45-60mins. Thanks a lot open for all answers!
I would hope that people wouldn't try to advise you which activity category to choose because you haven't actually shared any information about the things that count towards your activity setting - your job, your general day to day routine activities excluding purposeful exercise.
You could be a builder or a desk jockey, you could sit in front of a screen all evening and at weekends or you could be constantly on the move.....1 -
Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.kshama2001 wrote: »As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
It's not just our jobs we should consider, we need to consider all activity that isn't intentional exercise.
I have a desk job and I am far from sedentary: I take at least 6000 steps a day by walking to and from the train station to go to work, for example. I'm a horrible housewife, but on days I actually do housework my steps are higher too (multi-level house).
6000 steps per day is *barely* out of the sedentary range.
I agree that not all people who work at a desk are sedentary, but most people are not nearly as active as they think.1 -
Buttermello wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.kshama2001 wrote: »As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
It's not just our jobs we should consider, we need to consider all activity that isn't intentional exercise.
I have a desk job and I am far from sedentary: I take at least 6000 steps a day by walking to and from the train station to go to work, for example. I'm a horrible housewife, but on days I actually do housework my steps are higher too (multi-level house).
6000 steps per day is *barely* out of the sedentary range.
I agree that not all people who work at a desk are sedentary, but most people are not nearly as active as they think.
MFP considers sedentary to be below about 3500 steps actually, so 6000 is definitely in the lightly active category.9 -
6000 steps is the minimum, it can be more. And for 6000 steps I get around 100 extra calories, so MFP clearly thinks I'm not sedentary. (My activity level is set to sedentary and then my tracker adjusts)1
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Buttermello wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.kshama2001 wrote: »As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
It's not just our jobs we should consider, we need to consider all activity that isn't intentional exercise.
I have a desk job and I am far from sedentary: I take at least 6000 steps a day by walking to and from the train station to go to work, for example. I'm a horrible housewife, but on days I actually do housework my steps are higher too (multi-level house).
6000 steps per day is *barely* out of the sedentary range.
I agree that not all people who work at a desk are sedentary, but most people are not nearly as active as they think.
Most find the 3500 - 4500 level starts getting them extra calories which means moving out of Sedentary.
Of course it's not steps it's the distance that matters to the tracker for calorie calculation.
So yes 6000 steps of pretty much grocery store shuffle all day long isn't going to get you the same distance as 3500 steps of purposeful walking around.
If you worked from home and then watched TV/computer pretty much all night and weekends and did 6000 shuffle steps of barely any effort or distance - yes you'd likely be still in Sedentary land.
I think most on MFP that get trackers, as least as reported on here by the confusion that they get these extra calories and they have a sit down desk job, shows people are actually more active than they thought - though they never thought it about it much until MFP gave some brief description and they selected from 4 levels, selecting Sedentary to be on the safe side and all they think about is the 8 hr desk job and 1 hr commute - not the 4 hrs after work moving around house and 8 hours on 2 weekend days moving around a fair bit for things.
I have had some truly sedentary days in a small office, coffee and bathroom both within 15 ft, and then a 3 hr meeting after work, and only changing clothes between each - and still got over 4K steps and barely some calories added. For someone to accomplish that 7 days a week if they have a family or house or pets - yes there are sedentary people, but I doubt they are thinking they are more active than they are.3 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.kshama2001 wrote: »As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
It's not just our jobs we should consider, we need to consider all activity that isn't intentional exercise.
I have a desk job and I am far from sedentary: I take at least 6000 steps a day by walking to and from the train station to go to work, for example. I'm a horrible housewife, but on days I actually do housework my steps are higher too (multi-level house).
6000 steps per day is *barely* out of the sedentary range.
I agree that not all people who work at a desk are sedentary, but most people are not nearly as active as they think.
MFP considers sedentary to be below about 3500 steps actually, so 6000 is definitely in the lightly active category.
Really? I thought it was 5000.
Is there somewhere where this is stated?
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I've only seen this number mentioned in the forums myself.
I don't know how MFP works when linked to simple step counters, but when linked with activity trackers (that calculate number of calories burned) I don't think MFP directly takes into account the number of steps.
It compares the theoretical number of calories you burn while sedentary with the number of calories the activity tracker says you have burned. In my case that means I get extra calories when I exceed 3500-4000 steps, which fits with Heybales's message.3 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.kshama2001 wrote: »As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
It's not just our jobs we should consider, we need to consider all activity that isn't intentional exercise.
I have a desk job and I am far from sedentary: I take at least 6000 steps a day by walking to and from the train station to go to work, for example. I'm a horrible housewife, but on days I actually do housework my steps are higher too (multi-level house).
6000 steps per day is *barely* out of the sedentary range.
I agree that not all people who work at a desk are sedentary, but most people are not nearly as active as they think.
MFP considers sedentary to be below about 3500 steps actually, so 6000 is definitely in the lightly active category.
Really? I thought it was 5000.
Is there somewhere where this is stated?
5000 is closer to Lightly Active, I get credits from Garmin/MFP once I get past around 3500 if set to Sedentary and around 6000 if I am set to Lightly Active
I don't think there's anything official, just people's observations from calorie adjustments.2 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »Buttermello wrote: »If that's the only exercise you are getting, and you have a desk job, then I would choose sedentary.kshama2001 wrote: »As others have said, your activity level depends on your job and you log your exercise separately.
It's not just our jobs we should consider, we need to consider all activity that isn't intentional exercise.
I have a desk job and I am far from sedentary: I take at least 6000 steps a day by walking to and from the train station to go to work, for example. I'm a horrible housewife, but on days I actually do housework my steps are higher too (multi-level house).
6000 steps per day is *barely* out of the sedentary range.
I agree that not all people who work at a desk are sedentary, but most people are not nearly as active as they think.
MFP considers sedentary to be below about 3500 steps actually, so 6000 is definitely in the lightly active category.
Really? I thought it was 5000.
Is there somewhere where this is stated?
The extra calories is given because the tracker states you burned more than MFP thought you'd burn per your selected activity level.
The tracker calculates daily calories from BMR & distance (weight & pace & time is very accurate formula for calories).
Dynamic formula for distance from step impacts and stride length.
So there is no exact Step levels - there are ranges.
But people never seem to give out their daily distance since you'd have to look at tracker stats for that - so no feel for that.
So steps is a range. But 5K would be on the high end of some short distance steps for sure.1
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