Im keeping track of my daily exercise at the moment and counting time spent in the gym, or spent swimming or running. To increase my exercise I've bought a bike and have just started cycling to and from work. I plan to do this about 3 days a week. The journey is just over 60mins each way.

The problem is I remember reading on a previous post somewhere that you shouldn't count you're normal day to day activites, eg going to and from work. So before i never counted the 20mins it took me to walk to the train station.

But now, surely 2 hrs of biking 3 times a week can be counted? Im really confused!

What do you guys count / not count as exercise if you are tracking your exercise weekly or daily?

Well I certainly count the 6-7 miles a day I walk to work and back! if I didn't walk I probably wouldn't have lost as much weight as I have.

Count it!!!

I count every bit of exercise I get... even walking around the mall! I figure if I'm getting my buns up and out of a chair/couch, I must be doing something right.

I count most things. I don't count walking around the mall or the short walk to the store. I don't usually count cleaning the house unless it was something I don't normally do. Like moving furniture or the other day I was sweeping a big huge garage floor really hard for about half an hour. So I count that. But I don't count slimple things like putting away laundry (not usually anyway).

I would count things that I do with the INTENTION of them being ADDITIONAL exercise. So if I walk instead of getting the bus, that would be exercise. If I just wander round the house and would do that whether I was trying to exercise or not, I wouldn't.

(Actually for me, I'm a bit stricter and tend to only count running and stuff in the gym properly, but that's because I'm working towards running goals so I only count the exercise that helps me achieve that).

I think the mix up here has to do with getting a lifestyle setting for a programme like fitday.com????

If you set your activity level to reflect what you do every day, then the calories are stated like that everyday. Since you won't likely be biking to work on your days off or when it rains, you should add that as exercise.

I'm basically a housewife. Thru trial and error, I've found that I use about 1860 cals a day doing that. Like Courtnie said ... laundry, cooking, dishes, making beds etc. If I work or exercise or do something extraordinary like dancing or shopping ... I add that as exercise.
The trick is that if you consider yourself active and then add that activity on top, you're double dipping.
Did that make sense?

I only count workouts or special activities. Some days my schedule includes a lot of daily activity and some days not much at all so my workouts are my special insurance. That is what I count.

On the other hand, I think it could be very helpful for some people to count everything. For example if wearing a pedometer makes you park farther away from the door then counting things like that could be beneficial.

Thanks everyone. Im starting to see where my confusion came from! SusanB - I think you're right in that it may have something got to do with fitday! I think the solution is to keep my lifestyle setting the same and then just add in the cycling as activites day by day.

YP1 - It makes sense what you say about only counting exercise that helps you achieve your running goals (its amazing that you will be running the berlin marathon by the way!) I've just recently started running and at the moment am training for my first 5k which is in 4 weeks. Do you think 2hrs of biking 3 or 4 times a week will help increase my fitness for the 5k?