Activity level

AnimeGirlThighs · February 2022

Hello I was wondering if anyone could help me determine my activity level?
I don't want to choose the wrong one and end up with the wrong amount of calories.
At the moment I have it as lightly active.

My job is a personal shopper, so I spend 7 hours (Minus breaks) running around a large grocery/department store, and when I'm not running around I'm moving totes in and off carts, into shelves/freezers
So I'm never idle I guess haha
And average between 15k-20k steps a day, I also do weight training on my days off.
So, that's when I switched my activity level from not active to lightly active.

I am working on losing weight as my goal.

DancingMoosie · February 2022

I suggest choosing active(1 up from "lightly") and then log any other intentional exercise (like your weight training). You don't change your activity level day to day. It should reflect an average of your basic lifestyle before exercise, or including exercise if you want to do TDEE method, but then don't log it.

Lietchi · February 2022

15 to 20k steps per day is certainly above lightly active. Try active and log your strength training, as suggested above.
And then keep an eye on your weight trend: if you're losing faster than expected you might need to bump it up to very active.

sijomial · February 2022

You went in the right direction but you are far more than lightly active.

PAV8888 · February 2022

On days where you're put in your work shift and hit the 15 to 20K step level you are at or above the very active setting of MFP.

A specific exercise such as weight training would normally be considered separately as an exercise and not as part of your activity level.

As an aside, not in terms of health nor in terms of perceived exertion or even in terms of benefit you derive, but purely as a caloric burn: your weight training session burns significantly less calories in total than running around a grocery store for 6 hours.

I am not saying that each minute of lifting weights burns less. But you're probably not holding the weights up off the ground for a full six hours either!

Regardless of activity or attempted deficit, your end results will depend on your logging abilities and on how closely you end up aligning with population averages.

Since this is not known ahead of time, the best strategy is to collect information (calories in, calories out, expected weight change, actual weight change) and then apply corrections based on your own results once you have enough data. While large mistakes may be obvious fairly quickly, many females need a full menstrual cycle and 4 to 6 weeks of data before they can form a reliable opinion as to what is happening.

cmriverside · February 2022

I agree with those above who say the highest level of activity setting..."Very Active," and log your purposeful exercise separately. That's how this site is designed to work.

Then log food for 4-6 weeks and adjust.

I am set at "Active" and I'm retired, live in a tiny place and have very little physical requirements. Then I log my daily outdoor walk separately.

nooshi713 · February 2022

Based on your step count, you are very active.

PAV8888 · February 2022

I noticed that we have at least one person (I seem to have attracted two) who seems to believe that activities spread out over 6 hours and equaling about 15 to 20 thousand steps do not raise your physical activity level multiplier to 1.8 or more.

I wish they would perhaps state their objections.

The names sedentary, lightly active, active, very active do not have a deep meaning and do not confer social status.

They are just alternatives to mfp writing out BMR * 1.25, BMR * 1.4, BMR * 1.6, BMR * 1.8

If you want to do an internet search the 1.25, 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 are variously called physical activity factors or multipliers.

As should be fairly obvious, selecting one of these is an initial approximation based on population statistics.

Not every person in the population tracks exactly along the lines of the statistics. Having said that, by definition most come pretty close, so hey, if you don't have enough data of your own yet, it ain't a terrible starting point to go with what's close to correct for most people!

When we move past that starting point and we start combining individual logging habits and abilities and individual variability then we can proceed to more accurate results by looking at one's own actual data.

For your own data to be meaningful you have to put some effort over time and collect enough information.

I'm pretty sure that @nooshi713 knows that based on a lot of tracking she has to aim for bigger paper deficits to achieve smaller ones (her actual tdee is below population estimates).

I'm pretty sure that I know that my Fitbit TDEE (which uses the same type of population estimates as mfp) is overstated by less than 3%.

And I'm pretty sure @AnnPT77 knows that she tracks above the population mean and has to aim, for example, for maintenance in order to achieve a reasonable deficit, and for a surplus in order to achieve maintenance.

But until we each had sufficient results to evaluate our logging "discrepancy", which takes a few weeks especially if your weight is affected by external issues such as hormones or exercise, well, the best approximation we can use is population averages.

And, on average, 15-20k steps in a day requires enough movement that one's caloric burn by the end of the day exceeds the activity factor of 1.8 defined by MFP as very active--no matter how much any one of us agrees or disagrees that this should be so.🤷🏻‍♂️

Activity level

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