When you first setup Calory, one of the details you enter about yourself is your activity level. There are four options:
- Sedentary
- Lightly Active
- Moderately Active
- Very Active
You can change this setting at any time by tapping on your profile in Settings.
The activity level you set helps Calory calculate your daily calorie intake goal. Calory also takes into account your height and weight as well as your weight goal, i.e. whether you want to lose, maintain, or gain weight.
Here are some examples that show how your choice of activity level impacts your daily calorie intake goal:
- An adult male weighing 165 lbs who wants to maintain their current weight and is lightly active should consume 2,743 calories a day
- If that same man is very active, he would have to consume 3,053 calories to maintain his weight
- Staying with the same man but where he is sedentary, the daily calorie intake goal would drop to 2,124
So, how do you decide which activity level is best for you? Here is how activity levels work in Calory.
Activity Levels Explained
Sedentary
- You do less than 30 minutes a day of intentional exercise and you don't do anything that can be considered moderate or vigorous
- Daily living activities like walking the dog, shopping, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, or gardening don't count as intentional exercise
- You spend most of your day sitting
Lightly Active
- You do intentional exercise every day for at least 30 minutes
- The baseline for this is walking for 30 minutes at 4mph - this is walking at a brisk pace
- You can also do exercise for a shorter period of time providing the exercise is vigorous. An example of a vigorous activity is jogging.
- You will also usually spend a large part of your day on your feet
Moderately Active
- You do intentional exercise every day that is equivalent to briskly walking for at least one hour and 45 minutes - briskly walking is walking at 4mph
- Alternatively, you can do exercise for a shorter period of time providing the exercise is vigorous. An example of vigorous activity is jogging, i.e. you would need to jog for a minimum of 50 minutes to be considered moderately active.
- You will also probably spend a large part of your day doing something physical - examples include being a mailman or waitress
Very Active
- You do intentional exercise every day that is equivalent to briskly walking for at least four hours and 15 minutes - briskly walking is walking at 4mph
- You can also do exercise for a shorter period of time providing the exercise is vigorous - an example of vigorous activity is jogging - you would need to jog for a minimum of two hours a day to be considered very active.
- You will also probably spend most of your day doing something physical - examples include carpenters or bike messengers
Amount of Calories Burned
How many calories will you burn doing the minimum required amount of exercise in the above activity levels? The answer depends on your body, particularly your weight and height. That said, an adult who is an average weight will burn the following calories by doing the minimum amount of exercise for each activity level:
- Sedentary - zero
- Lightly Active - between 130 and 160 calories
- Active - between 470 and 580 calories
- Very Active - between 1,150 and 1,400 calories
Note that you will also burn calories every day doing non-exercise activities. The figures above only relate to the calories burned doing intentional exercise.
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