I'm always baffled by these calorie calculators that ask me about my general lifestyle. I'm not sure whether to put slightly active, moderately active, or very active - I tend to go with moderate, because I'm unsure.

How much activity do you have to do to be "very active"? Would an hour and a half/20 miles of biking + 15-30 minutes of weight training five times a week be considered such?

If you use these things, what do you put? And do you find it to be accurate?

Eh, I think all the sites differ on what would be considered very active. I always put sedentary no matter what, 'cause then at least its an under and not over estimate!

HAHA, yeah, I have my fitday at "seated work" (really, my job is seated work with some movement, and sometimes I'm on my feet most of the day, but I'm playing it safe).

My question was more directed towards the daily plate. Their calorie calculator has estimates for how much I need to eat to lose _x_ number of pounds. I set my activitity level as "moderately active"... though the amount of calories I can eat is pretty limited according to the site, so I wondered... I'm hungry a lot, and I don't mean head hunger - I mean GRAWRRRR FEED ME NOW! hunger. I DO feed myself when I'm hungry, though when I first started dieting (and tried to limit myself to, say 1,300 calories), I didn't. I was miserable. Haha. It also depends on what KIND of calories you eat, though. Since I've temporarily cut carbs from my diet, I've been eating a whole lot less calories by default but feeling a whole lot more full.

As cagesorwings says, there's no one universal definition of "very active," you have to read the definitions provided on the web site you are using. But, having said that, I usually think of "very active" as having a job that requires a lot of activity (like manual labor) or someone that is a professional athlete.

I exercise a lot, around an hour a day, seven days week, including running (intervals and distance), swimming, and strength training. I thought with all this exercise that I'd be able to add more calories to my diet, but I haven't really found that to be the case. I try to keep my calories around 1300 a day and I do have to be pretty careful about what I eat to make sure I'm not hungry during the day.

Blue:
In a perfect world, all the exercise would make it so that you could eat more. The perfect world calorie calculator of FitDay tells me that between basal, work (I put the lowest work level), and activities, that I'm burning around 3,000 calories a day. I highly doubt I could eat close to that much and still be expected to lose weight.

Compared to the average American, we're both "very active" but that's not really saying much. I also read that the average American eats 2,500-3,500 calories a day... @_@

I must also mention the site listed "extremely active" as people who are professional athletes and construction workers. It said "very active" people were those who do exercise every day like running and cycling for (what appeared to be) more than an hour, but they were rather vague.

The way some of us folks have set FitDay is just to put in Sedentary (which comes out to: 8 hours sleep, 4 hours rest, and 12 hours light seated activity) and then add any exercise we do as extra using the activity log.

FitDay gave me a calorie burn that was too high otherwise--but set as it is right now, it's fine--gives me predictable results.

Jay

I just did that. It's sad to see those extra 400 calories "burned" no longer existing, but you're right - it's probably much more accurate. I wonder why they over-calculate so much...

AND, even WHEN I set my thingy to sedentary... I STILL have around a 1,000 calorie deficit on most days!

I'm glad to hear this about fitday. I figure I do more than "sedentary" -- but it makes sense to underestimate activity with the goal of losing weight.

BluetoBlue Said "I usually think of "very active" as having a job that requires a lot of activity (like manual labor) or someone that is a professional athlete. "

Exactly!!!

While I was working as a personal trainer and demoing exercises, soing them with clietns, hauling around weight plates, and doing my own daily workout and cardio, I still set fitday to sedentary and it still overestimated my calories.

According to Fitday, I should have disappeared about 4 years ago. I'm very much here, still doing 45 minutes of cardio daily and weight training 5 days per week for about 45 minutes without much resting.

1400 -1500 calories is maintenance for me (at 120lbs and 52 yrs old), and every bit above that appears on my stomach.

I use Fitday to log what I eat. That's it. Their calories burned calculations and calories required don't bear any semblance of reality for me.

Mel

I always say sedentary.

I try to stay at 1200-1400 cals a day.

What gives me predictable results is if I put "slightly active".

Five hours with a shovel, a couple of hours hauling a heavy total station through the bush, loading and unloading, and if I`m lucky sometime with a pick ax. Yup, that describes "slightly active" to a t.

I should feel awful exercising for just 4 hours a week. That's like the recommended minimum for being healthy from mypyramid.gov... Gosh what happened to me?

It's like, when I'm active, I'm ACTIVE. And then when i'm in a rut, I stay there. And then I go back to being active, then in a rut, and then active again, the cycle continues. I should just never stop being active.

Shane, I think you're pretty active. 5 days a week... Mon-Fri? I'd much prefer to work out monday to friday than the weekends (LOTS of people hit the gym only on their weekends!!! These are people who usually can't fit it in their work schedules)

Yes, I find that most of the calorie calculators aren't accurate for me; they've always estimated too high. My theory is that they just aren't accurate for those at the extremes (either low or high end) of the calorie spectrum. According to most calculators, with the level of exercise I do, I should be losing 2 (or more) lbs per week, but that has never happened for me.

I've figured out how many calories to eat through trial and error; I don't rely on the calculators anymore. But sometimes it's fun to plug the numbers in and fantasize about how much I could eat if they were right.