Activity Calculator: a Method for Achieving a Balanced Lifestyle for People with Chronic Fatigue, 2025, Pinxsterhuis

https://activity-matters.com/wp-con...lifestyle-for-people-with-chronic-fatique.pdf

Authors:
Irma Pinxsterhuis, Greke Hulstein – van Gennep, Karin ten HoveMoerdijk and Kirsti Hellesøy

 

The is no mention of delayed symptoms or anything that resembles PEM. I would not recommend this tool to anyone with ME/CFS.

 

Stuff like this always reminds of this meme:

Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Candles $3,600
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying​

It seems so simple. And it is, but simple doesn't mean useful.

 

They assign the same score for 45min of medium activities and 30min of strenuous one. I think you will find yourself crashing real badly if you do the strenuous one instead of the medium one, in that proportion. That's my experience, at least. I have cut the duration by half if I increase the intensity by about 5%. Intensity acts like an exponential coefficient.

If you are going to score activities and sum up the damage, you may as well use MET values and experiment with various different models to fit your crash patterns. It can be done by programming the spreadsheet. I use my own Activity Description Language and damage calculation model to do that.

 

Yes, what annoys me is the entire lack of consideration of rest days. An athlete doesn't do the same amount of training every day and neither should we (activity levels, not athletic training, you know what I mean). Rest days are fundamental to health.

 

The website, Activity Matters, that hosts that article seems to exist solely to promote their Activity Weigher 'system', which seems to include this "activity calculator", and courses,

"WHAT IS THE ACTIVITY WEIGHER?

How do you determine which and how many activities someone can do, without overloading or underloading themselves? The Activity Weigher is a method to make the load over a day clear, objective and measurable. Activities matter!

Karin ten Hove and Greke Hulstein developed the Activity Weigher (with many thanks to Meander Medical Center ). Karin and Greke have been teaching courses to fellow occupational therapists in the Netherlands and abroad for over 15 years."

"Karin ten Hove and Greke Hulstein are both occupational therapists and developers of the Activity Weigher.

The development took place in practice, while working as an occupational therapist in Meander Medical Center. They have been giving courses to occupational therapists from all over the country for more than 10 years now. They have also given courses to occupational therapists abroad (Norway and Belgium).

They now continue developing the methodology and providing courses from their own company: Activity-Matters!"