TexasToast82

Thanks! That link actually helps quite a bit. It goes into more specifics, and makes me think Very Active is probably the best fit for me, although perhaps somewhere more than Active but not quite Very Active. Hard to tell only in that it doesn't go into many specifics about lifting heavy things. Like how lifting compares to walking or jogging in terms of calories burned. Still, as pointed out, since weight gain is the goal, there's no harm in overstating my activity unless I start developing a gut.

Hey all! I have a question about how to determine my current activity level for the purpose of determining my daily calorie needs and planning out some workout stuff. My main goal is to gain weight (preferably muscle of course, but I could stand to get a bit fatter too.) I've used those online calculators before and they always ask for your activity level. This is where I run into problems, because the explanations of each activity level almost invariably reference how often you "workout." I NEVER work out. NEVER. Okay, sometimes I play around on my weight bench at home, but those times are so few and far between it isn't worth mentioning. However, I work as a produce receiver at a grocery store. So for 4-8 hrs a day I am breaking down palettes of produce, putting them on carts, pushing them across the length of the store to the produce cooler, and putting them down on dunnage and shelves. So I lift 200-700 boxes five days a week, most boxes ranging 20-50 pounds. I lift as many boxes as I can manage in one lift depending on size and weight. So I figure most lifts are between 40-80 pounds. I used a shipping manifest one day to get a (very) rough estimate of how much I'm lifting total each day and I figure it's anywhere between 4k-8k pounds a day depending on the size of the order. So in terms of a weight lifting session, not exactly grueling, but I'm also never really standing in one place for long either, so it's a mixed bag. Most days I finish the truck in about 4 hours and then work the produce floor, which is lots of walking, standing, and light lifting. On double truck day (once a week), I spend pretty much my whole 8 hr shift on putting up the palettes. I'm not very experienced with workouts, so I don't know how to quantify my activity level in terms of "How often do you workout?" And in my free time, I'm pretty sedentary. Beyond the occasional walk around the neighborhood and household chores, I'm mostly playing video games, reading, youtubing, drawing/painting, and other low energy activities. But I'm pretty sure my entire job classifies as a workout of some sort. At least my body tells me so. By my age (37), the men in my family have usually gained a sizable gut, while my six foot tall frame still struggles to reach and maintain 150 lbs. I use MyFitnessPal to track what I eat. I set a goal of gaining 1 pound per week, and set an Activity Level of 'Very Active,' the highest setting. But I don't know if I should back it down to just 'Active.' Here are how the app describes each level: Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. food server, postal carrier) Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter) I could see myself fitting into either of those categories, and the occupation examples don't particularly help. I know that my current job is much more tiring than any of my previous food serving jobs, but beyond that, I don't know. Does anyone have a solid idea on how to translate that to "workout" terms? And bonus points for a rough estimation of how many calories I'm burning in an average day. I'm just completely in the dark on this one. When I'm really trying, I attempt to eat 4k calories a day.

I handle lactose just fine, but it's the reduced sugar that appeals to me. Making kefir would work even better to that end, but I can't tolerate the flavor. I think I'm going to go with fairlife for now. Probably start with a quart a day and go from there.

Yeah, I'm definitely getting into milk more. Today I threw together a 1200 calorie shake with milk, bananas, blueberries, peanut butter, whey powder, and hemp hearts. It took me a minute to get through it, but it really made it easy to get the rest of the calories in later in the day. Usually my "snacks" entry in MFP is as large if not larger than my meal entries. With all the fat and protein, I typically get full at 500-600 calories. I can eat 1000 calories of carbs like it's nothing, but if my family history is any indication I'm 10 years away from diabetes if I don't watch it. I think I'll start the day with this new shake. That should give me a head start. And I'll add some veggies to my daily salmon Caesar salad. Maybe tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers. As for the milk, is a gallon a day really a good idea? Maybe I could do a half gallon. I'm a bit worried about the sugar content. I picked up a bottle of this new Fairlife milk, which has much less sugar due to it's "ultra filtration" or whatever. But I wonder if there's anything wrong with this product. 50% more protein, 30% more calcium, and less sugar sounds too good to be true. It's made by Coca-Cola, so I'm a little skeptical.

Seems like most the people on this thread are in the "GMO is no big deal" camp, and also closely connected to the industry. It's nice to hear from people that know a lot of the details and can share information that the mainstream and internet media don't always share. Of course, on the other hand, seems like most of you are also coming from a background of family farmers/ranchers whose financial lives depend upon being able to justify the practices that are currently industry standard. That statement is surely not nuanced enough to be fair, but that's just me being honest about the bias I'm bringing to the discussion. It seems that being anti-GMO is a pretty fashionable thing these days, even among people who aren't particularly interested in doing their own research or wading too deeply into the rigors of getting their facts straight. People pick a camp, and then actively seek out only the information that reinforces their existing opinion. If I was forced to state a position, I guess I would say that I am basically against the practices that are commonly referred to as GMO. But I am also aware that I haven't done anywhere near enough unbiased research to definitely say I know that I am right. Do GMOs pose a risk to human health? I don't know. Do they pose a risk to ecological health? I don't know. And that's where I'm coming from. I hear things here and there, from both sides of the debate. But I don't wade too deeply into it. I pick my position not because I hold any specific truths about the effects of GMOs, but because I think commercial development of GMOs is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, in the face of much larger problem that does exist. What I do know is that more traditional breeding practices have been doing us just fine for tens of thousands of years, in terms of crop viability. And while I am aware that those practices involve the manipulation of genetics, as one of the above posters stated, the pace is much, much slower. And time has a way of mitigating potentially dangerous (or perhaps unbalanced is a more fair way to put it) effects. I don't believe that Mother Nature, or God, or whatever knows any better than humans do what is and isn't good for plants/animals/humans/the planet.. I just think her processes come with stronger protections. She is more reliable, more time-tested. So, given that nobody can say with any reasonable certainty what all the possible consequences are, why should we mess with GMOs? What's the point? Basically the only answers I ever get to this question are 1)We need GMOs to feed an increasing human population, and 2)We need GMOs to solve the current problems facing large scale agriculture, which is really just a reformulation of number 1. (Number 1 sounds more humanitarian, while number 2 suggests the possibility of a profit motive at work. This is just an observation, not trying to suggest anything specific here) Without GMOs, the line goes, we can't feed the world. But that begs the question, who's we? Who can't feed the world? Who is this small subset of people who believe it is their responsibility alone to provide food for the world? Aren't people responsible for feeding themselves? Sure, there are poor people who do not have the knowledge and the access to the means to grow their own food. But isn't THAT the larger problem? Until the advent of large scale agriculture, didn't all people have the knowledge and means to raise or locate their own food for themselves? Why should the production and sale of food be so concentrated into the hands of so few people? If it were more distributed, less centralized, more personal, would anyone have even thought to bother with GMOs on a scale any larger than pure scientific exploration? If you removed financial interest from the business of creating food, would anyone other than curious scientists be deeply interested in GMOs? These questions aren't entirely rhetorical, I'm really asking. What is the intrinsic value of GMO? Unless I'm just really out of touch, I think we can all agree that there are pretty large problems with our current food system that have nothing to do with the questions around GMOs. And from my perspective, the GMO debate is a smoke screen to the problems that are actually much more ingrained, and harder to solve. But as long as we have them to debate about (as well as the natural/unnatural and organic/conventional arguments), no one is ever going to do much debating about the deeper, more systematic problems. I do agree that there is way too much confusion and convolution surrounding the realities of GMOs. And while I stated that I'm basically in the Anti camp, I don't particularly go out of my way to avoid them. I'd like there to be a lot more transparency around the issue, but I'm not going to tell people I believe GMOs are unhealthy. I'm perfectly comfortable suspending judgement on that issue. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't object to them on scientific or health grounds, because I'm not at all qualified to have a definitive opinion in those realms. But I do object to them on political grounds because I think they are unnecessary and that all the arguments for their necessity depend on perpetuating a food system that is already unjust. Sorry for all that, I've never been able to write a forum post less than a page long.. I welcome all respectful comments to what I've said, and enjoy hearing alternative opinions.

Thanks everyone for the replies. Sorry for just getting back; work took over my life this week. Right now my goal in MyFitnessPal is set to 3,070 calories a day. I'm thinking this is still too low (even before adding workouts), but historically it's been very hard for me to eat 3,000 calories in a day. I'm just not that hungry. Before I started tracking anything, my eating has been very inconsistent. I would go very long periods without any foods. As in, some days I'd get to 2pm and notice the only thing I'd put in my body was a cup of coffee and some water, but usually I'd have something to eat within 2-3 hours of waking. Other days I would pretty much eat all day, at least every two hours. I'm thinking on average I would probably eat 1500-2000 calories a day. Hard to say because of how inconsistent it was. This past week, I've been hitting my 3,070 goal, occasionally surpassing it by 100-300 calories. I think I've found a set of standby foods that will keep me full and meet my calorie and macro goals (20% carb/50% fat/30%protein) Still some days, even workout days, getting in 3,000+ has been a chore. I think I just need to build the habit and hopefully my body will adapt to cramming in the food. I've been doing good at keeping carbs low (under 100g for off days, not worrying much about it on workout days as long as I'm avoiding sugar). Getting up my protein has been my biggest challenge, but I've been exceeding 200g a day for the past 4 days. At some point I need to add non-lettuce vegetables back into my diet . I've been eating a solid diet of beef, bacon, eggs, cheese, salmon and lettuce, milk, yogurt, butter and nuts. With some hummus and pretzel crisps thrown in there, half a handful of berries with my yogurt, and a box of mac and cheese a couple hours before lifting (not the cleanest carb out there, I know, but I hate sweet potatoes, lol). Vegetables are so filling for so little calories, it's hard to justify putting them in there. I suppose that's what butter is for. I think I'm not totally on the wrong track here, but I'm worried that I'm still eating too little, even though it's becoming a chore. I've been losing and regaining the same 6 pounds roughly monthly for years. I've stayed above 140 for a few months now with little effort, which is encouraging. I just weighed in at a fraction under 145, but there are so many variables there that I'll be happy to have gained one actual pound in this week. I think I'll keep my calorie goal at 3070 for now and just work on edging past that a little more each day. When I can eat 3,000 without "effort eating," I'll increase my goal. I'd like to get to 150 as quick as possible and then reevaluate.

Hey there, this is my first time here so I hope I'm in the right forum. So I'm trying to gain weight (ideally a pound a week, but that might be tough), and I've been using the MyFitnessPal android app to track what I eat, but I have no sense for how many calories I'm burning in a day. I just started lifting weights, and am sure that there is plenty of info out there on roughly how many calories I'm burning when I lift, but I don't know how to estimate my normal daily activity to get a baseline. I've searched around the web and while I know the estimates will be broad because of how variable everyone's situation is, none of the common "profiles" really stand out as being like me. Basically, I don't exercise at all (I just started lifting last week), but I don't have a desk job either. I work produce at a grocery store, and basically walk around all day. I'd say I'm probably spending at least 5-6 of my 8 hours walking, with the rest of the time spent standing at displays as I stock them, and perhaps an hour (2 max) at a computer. All day I'm picking up and putting down boxes that range in weight from 10-50 lbs. Away from work I might run a few errands, and water and weed my small garden, but other than that its all video games and netflix. I don't consider myself very active, but the descriptions of sedentary don't seem right to me either. But anything above sedentary gets defined by how often you exercise, which seems pretty vague to me. I don't consider myself to ever exercise (until just now), but it seems like maybe I'm burning more calories in the course of my job than most people. Does anyone have any thoughts about where I would fall under the "activity level" parts of those online calorie calculators? I'm a 34 year old male that is 5'11" and currently weighs 142 lbs. Does 2500 calories burned in a day before working out sound reasonable?