Hey,
on all these online calculators to figure out you maintenance calories, you always have to pick a activity level and I always struggle with this.. this is my schedule, can I get some ideas as to am I lightly, moderately or very active??

I have a desk job but I do get up and move around fairly often. take the steps always. walk to the cafe and printer alot and so forth. I work out with weights doing a full body routine 3 days a week. after the weights on those days I do 30 more minutes of some cardio, either treadmill or elliptical. Two other days I either go for a walk or I work out on my heavy bag doing rounds or punching tabatas. I usually always take 2 complete days off so my body can rest...

so, what activity level do you think I am? and which is best, pick an accurate level and not count exercise, or pick on and don't count? thank you in advance...:waving:

somewhere between lightly and moderately you'd fall...

There is really no one size fits all measurement - you really do have to play around and see what works best for you and your body at a given point... Start as high as possible and then adjist down if you're not getting results

I have a related question -

At my normal activity level I should be burning about 1800 /day.

So I cut 500 off of that for 1300/day

But then I start exercising as well. So, should I be cutting 500 off my new higher activity level, or off my original?

Bsox - I'd put you in the moderate category.

Llama - I wouldn't go any lower than 1300, and you may even find that you're happier around 1500.

I have a related question -

At my normal activity level I should be burning about 1800 /day.

So I cut 500 off of that for 1300/day

But then I start exercising as well. So, should I be cutting 500 off my new higher activity level, or off my original?

Are you sure your daily maintenance calories are that low? Maybe it is 1800 calories if you never even got out of bed.

To get your calories per day just going to walk, that kinda thing no exercise you should multply your BMR by 1.2 so if your BMR is 1800 your daily maintenance calories is 2160. So what you would do is subtract about 20% and that leaves you with 1728 calories. Then, any exercise you do you add it into your defecit.

I agree that 1800 sounds low, but it was the result returned by a couple of calculators and seems to be accurate.

Of course, I've never actually managed to live on 1300 ;-)

The adding exercise to the deficit part is what I was wondering about. Thanks.