What Are Activity Levels and How Do They Work?

When you first setup WaterMinder, 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 WaterMinder calculate your daily water intake goal. WaterMinder also takes into account weight and other factors.

Here are some examples that show how your choice of activity level impacts your daily water intake goal:

• An adult female weighing 156 lbs who is lightly active should drink 87 oz of water a day
• If that same woman is very active, she would have to drink 118 oz of water a day
• Staying with the same woman but where she is sedentary, the daily water intake goal would drop to 65 oz.

So, how do you decide which activity level is best for you? Here is how activity levels work in WaterMinder

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 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