Exercise and activity advice needed

[Jason.L]

I just bought a charge HR and have had it for over a week. I have nailed down one big issue, a lot of false steps while working at my job as cashier. Which now leaves me with getting an exercise and activity plan to meet my weight loss goal. And to keep it off and remain in better shape. I'm 40 years old and it is of no surprise that I'm not as fit as I was in high school but being much more health consious now I'm shocked at how out of shape I am. I'm not grossly overweight. I was 180 in high school and nearly 250 at one point in recent years. I'm currently about 230 and my goal is to reach 200 on the harder plan (1,000 calorie deficit over 12 weeks). I don't know what my body fat percent is or BMI (whatever that is). On a typical work day I walk at least 2,000 step as a result of daily routine not counting specificly walking just to walk for exercise. My 7 day average ( only had the charge HR for 10 days) is 3,631 steps . A 7 day total of 93 active minutes.

Note that while at work I have to keep the charge HR in my pocket so that it doesn't record false steps as a result of cashiering and also to not way over record my calories burned. Calories burned was the second problem. I tried using exercise mode to isolate all the time of the work day spent cashiering. As a result it had recorded that I had burned thousands of calories. I'm told only an athlete, someone spending a huge amount of time at a gym, or had a very physically demanding job would burn that much calories. Which leaves me with an unknown amount of calories burned as a result of my work day.

Which leads us to exercise and activity to add daily or in parts of a weekly routine. The obvious first thing to me is to go for a walk every evening. The time I get off work varies by several hours and my meal times vary by about the same. A consistent time for the walk at say 8pm would possibly be interrupted by working later than usual. And I have certain social gatherings later in the evenings several times a week at 9pm and later. I'm not keen on the idea of a gym membership I tried that some years ago and I think was far more than I need. Plus I figure anything I can acomplish there can be accomplished by other means in and around my home. I don't own a bike. Which takes us to what else should I do for exercise and activity? Such as aerobic exercise (one of the auto tracked thing). If that is recommended I'd have no idea where to begin. Anyway this post is already long so I'll await replies and see where that leads. Thanks.

[Heather-S]

How about morning walks before work?  Can you walk during your lunch break?  

I have a very sedentary job (at a cubicle for 9 hours a day).  I take 12 minute breaks twice a day to walk our parking garage, this also gets me some floors as well, and I usually get about 1600 steps for each 12 minute walk.  At night, I walk the dogs with my husband.  We have two big dogs, so we walk them separately and that can get me about 3000+ steps.

But, just doing the 12 minute walks and walking the dogs is not enough.  I did an additional 30 minute walk by myself after we walked the dogs tonight to grab another 3200 steps.  I finally broke 10,000 steps today by adding in that extra 30 minute walk in the evening.

However, I am now planning on adding a 30-45 minute walk in the mornings before work as well to hopefully get my step count closer to 15K steps.

At some point, you have to put your health first, so that might mean you need to say no to some social engagements so you can do more physical activities like walking at night.  Or take advantage of weekends or your days off to really walk a lot to get in those extra steps that you can't get in during the work week.

[GershonSurge]

Jason,

I've done many tests with the Fitbit Surge comparing calories the Fitbit says I've burned with the weight loss expected for the calorie deficit I had. The simple answer is maintain a 1,000 calorie deficit with Fitbit's numbers and you will likely lose weight. A simpler answer is to eat your BMR of about 1,900 calories every day and you will lose weight.  Increase your calories if you feel too hungry or you are losing weight too quickly.

However, you may be burning more calories than you think. I often start the workout function for non-exercise activites such as cleaning kitchen counters, scrubbing the floor, painting the house, gardening, etc. Based on my experience with these tests, I'd wager you are burning about 6-6.5 calories a minute while cashering. If you work for eight hours, you may be burning 5,000 calories/day according to the Fitbit.

The Fitbit Surge overcounts calories in my case based on weight lost/calorie deficit, so I'd guess it's closer to 4,200 calories a day. This error only applies to activity calories, so on your days off where you burn fewer calories, the error is less.

What I would do is leave the HR in workout mode all day and not worry about false steps. The calories burned in this mode shouldn't double count false steps as it is theoretically based on heart rate.

Bottom line -- The Fitbit is not a precision calorie counter, but it is good enough for weight loss. Find your comfortable deficit, and maintain if desired as Fitbit's assessment of calories burned changes. 

[FitBeforeFifty]

There's a lot to cover in your post, but I'll try to hit the major items.

Calories burned working as a cashier

Fitbit users get way too hung up on steps, in my opinion. I understand why but most fitbit users don't understand steps are not a great way to measure TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). For example, did you know you burn 50% more calories while working sitting at a desk than you do sitting on the couch and watching TV ? Did you know you burn 33% more calories standing while working than you do sitting ? Those are all pretty big calorie swings between these activities yet they all have 0 steps. 

So, let's take your job as an example. According to METS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent), your job has a METs multiplier of 2.3. That means you burn 2.3 times as many calories engaging in this activity than you would doing nothing. You can find a table of activities and multipliers here: http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/tools/docs/documents_compendium.pdf

Activity: standing; light (bartending, store clerk, assembling, filing, duplicating, putting up a Christmas tree), standing and talking at work, changing clothes when teaching physical education

Multiplier: 2.3

For some perspective, walking the dog at 3 mph has a multiplier of 3.0 while watching TV has a multiplier of 1.0. 

So, you need to give yourself some credit for your job ... it's not that different than steps you would get while out walking the dog which most people consider exercise. My recommendation is don't worry about "false" steps. Wear your fitbit on your wrist and use it in normal mode (not in exercise mode).

Exercise

Walking is a good place to start but it's the most inefficient of all exercises I personally participate in. In fact, I don't even include it as exercise ... I just include it as steps. I burn twice as many calories per hour lifting weights as I do walking. I burn about 2.5 times as many calories cycling as I do walking. I burn about 3.5 times as many calories running as I do walking. So, there are things you can accomplish via other activities that far exceed what you can accomplish via walking.

Also, when losing weight you will lose lean muscle mass in addition to fat. If you are active and include weight lifting in your routine you can mitigate the loss of lean muscle mass. This will allow you to burn more calories once you reach your goal because your body requires more energy to maintain lean muscle mass than is required to maintain fat mass.

[dancefoxtrot]

Jason,

Prioritize your health. Fit in walking somewhere and lower empty carbs and sugars and you will lose weight. Health is your best friend especially as you get older. Just do it. Don't listen to all the excuses your mind creates. They are just thoughts from the status quo part of you. Thoughts lie. 

All the best,

Barbara G

[GershonSurge]

@FitBeforeFifty

I always enjoy your responses. It's clear you have studied exercise thoroughly. That MET table is excellent. Your posts convinced me to add weight lifting to my routine. I also added jump roping.

@Jason.L

I wouldn't worry about active minutes as Fitbit doesn't count them until you are exercising for 10 minutes. Cashiering likely distort this number. Calories will work well enough for you. As FitBeforeFifty said, leaving the Fitbit in normal mode will work

[Jason.L]

The main reason I was concerned with steps was I liked the idea of knowing just how much walking I am doing day to day. Given that it would be a part of my exercise I thought it would be important to know if I have walked enough for any given day. Given the MET info of 2.3 and fitbit indicating 1,944 calories as 24 hours of resting rate I guess it would be? That is the daily calories burned listed for every day prior to the first day I got my fitbit. So 1,944 divided by 24, the result multiplied by 2.3, then multiplied by the hours worked should give me the amount of calories burned at work correct? So for 8 hours of work I would have burned 1,490 calories? If this is correct then all I need to do is wear my fitbit at work again and not use exercise mode this time and see if the calories burned reasonably match up to that?

On the topic of exercise activities what would be some I should concider doing? I see advertisements all the time for what I assume are a variety of aerobics you follow from the lead of some person on a video. So the idea of aerobic exercise came to mind when posting the thread. Assuming the weights and weight bench my brother doesn't use aren't junk I could use that. I have something that shows different free weights lifting methods, I guess you would call them, that target specific muscle groups. If this is something that would be recommended. Anyway without making this post real long what exercise activities would ya'll recommend? On a side note my scheduled social engagements are only three nights a week. Any other free time I have is completely flexible for anything from exercise to leisure activities. I think the best plan of action for me is to plan out a schedule of exercising and work everything else around it and hopefully be able to retain the three scheduled social things. And I assume certain leasure activities can be combined with exercise like watching TV while lifting weights as an example.

[FitBeforeFifty]

---

@Jason.L wrote:

...

So 1,944 divided by 24, the result multiplied by 2.3, then multiplied by the hours worked should give me the amount of calories burned at work correct? So for 8 hours of work I would have burned 1,490 calories? If this is correct then all I need to do is wear my fitbit at work again and not use exercise mode this time and see if the calories burned reasonably match up to that?

...

---

Yes, that's where I would start. Once you have several weeks of food, calorie burn and weight data you can then compare your actual weight loss to predicted weight loss and get a better idea of how accurate fitbit is estimating your TDEE.  Just keep in mind that our body weight fluctuates quite a bit day to day so you need a pretty large sample size (I suggest 3 weeks) before you can evaluate actual vs. predicted. Also, when you change your activity level (especially if you introduce weight lifting) your water weight might increase due to inflamation. This usually goes away after 2 weeks but sometimes leads people to the wrong conclusion.

Regarding exercise, as I said, walking is a great place to start but if you really want to get fit you should have a well rounded activity profile. I prefer to lift weights 2 or 3 times per week and run 4 to 5 days per week. You could start with walking as your cardio and then transition to something else later (like cycling, running, whatever you like to do) as you become more fit. Some people have success with walking alone and that's fine. In fact, you don't NEED exercise at all to lose weight ... you just need to eat less than you burn. If you want to be healthy, however, you need exercise.

Also, as a 40 year old man, this is where you start to naturally lose muscle mass even without weight loss. When you compound weight loss with the natural tendency to lose lean mass as you age, you are at a critical point. Increasing your activity level and including a well rounded exercise routine will pay major dividends as you age. I'll be 50 in a couple of weeks and I'm in better shape, stronger and more active now than I was in my 20s. My peers are on medication and complain about energy level and weight gain. I'm in perfect health, take no medication and I'm at the same weight I was in high school. 

[emili]

This: . I think the best plan of action for me is to plan out a schedule of exercising and work everything else around it . ...is the best thing you wrote. That's the whole thing about getting to a healthier you. Its not fitting it into your schedule- its fitting your schedule into it. There is a lot of good information here already, but all of it is useless if reasons why not come first. I sincerely hope you put your health before everything else. I wish you huge success in your journey to fitness..

[Jason.L]

After testing at work wearing the charge HR but not using exercise mode it is still way over estimating calories burned. It is reporting twice the MET of 2.3 for my job. At the end of a day with an 8 hour shift that is just shy of 5,000 calories it says I have burned but by the MET number that should be 3,434 calories burned. I'm concerned on that point because to date if I have been burning that many calories I have either been way over eating or the 3,434 is not the amount I am burning. If I don't wear it while at work my daily calories burned has been indicated as on average 2,550 roughly estimated. Lows of about 2,300 and highs of about 2,700.