Some people seem to burn so many calories in exercise, how? What do you do?

SingingSingleTracker

atypicalsmith wrote: »

There are a couple of people on here who regularly claim to burn 1,500+ calories in a two hour time frame. Sorry, but I don't believe it. In the average world, who can go at the rate and speed needed to burn 750 calories an hour for two hours a day???

Well, yes and no.

Pretty hard to go that hard for two hours a day on a consecutive basis without some adaptation (recovery days) between. At race speed on my mountain bike, I can burn 1800 - 1900 in two hours. I could do that 2 days in a row, but have never tried it for a third day in a row as my body and mind don't feel like taking on that kind of pain for a third day.

Now if you extend the time beyond 2 hours and let me ride in Zone 2 (instead of Zone 4/5), I can string together quite a few days of Zone 2 before (nearly 5 or 6) my body screams for a rest day from the accumulated training stress. So I can easily burn 1500 calories, but it would most likely be a bit over the 2 hour mark (looking at my Training Peaks account, it takes me about 2:05 to 2:07 to hit 1500 calories on the road bike in Zone 2). I use both a power meter and a heart rate monitor which combined, does a great job of getting my calorie burn measured - especially the power meter.

angielisa75

The other day when I did Insanity for an hour I burned 535 calories. Today I did Insanity for 39 minutes and burned 323 calories. When someone tells me they burn over a 1000 calories for an hour I think they must be super human or very wrong.

Mr_Knight

SingingSingleTracker wrote: »

atypicalsmith wrote: »

There are a couple of people on here who regularly claim to burn 1,500+ calories in a two hour time frame. Sorry, but I don't believe it. In the average world, who can go at the rate and speed needed to burn 750 calories an hour for two hours a day???

Well, yes and no.

Pretty hard to go that hard for two hours a day on a consecutive basis without some adaptation (recovery days) between. At race speed on my mountain bike, I can burn 1800 - 1900 in two hours. I could do that 2 days in a row, but have never tried it for a third day in a row as my body and mind don't feel like taking on that kind of pain for a third day.

Now if you extend the time beyond 2 hours and let me ride in Zone 2 (instead of Zone 4/5), I can string together quite a few days of Zone 2 before (nearly 5 or 6) my body screams for a rest day from the accumulated training stress. So I can easily burn 1500 calories, but it would most likely be a bit over the 2 hour mark (looking at my Training Peaks account, it takes me about 2:05 to 2:07 to hit 1500 calories on the road bike in Zone 2). I use both a power meter and a heart rate monitor which combined, does a great job of getting my calorie burn measured - especially the power meter.

This is a good post. Slowing down allows for larger burners, more often, but comes at the cost of time. Possibly a LOT of time.

Also...power meteres FTW.

:drinker:

brendak76

In general I take what mfp (and another website) tells me I burn and cut that in half. Then I only eat back half of that. Today mfp told me I burned about 300 calories on the elliptical, I figured I only burned 150 and am logging it as 75 I can eat back. It's working very well for me with weight loss.