Exercise Calories...Again

RosieWest8

My experience -- I calculated my TDEE based on a sedentary lifestyle because I'm a school psychologist and am sitting at my desk or with students most of the day. I purchased a simple Polar HRM and use it when I do cardio workouts (I don't lift really and when I do it's very low amount of weight. I also do body weight stuff a bit). However, I only use my HRM when I'm doing my cardio workout which is usually running/jogging or a stationary bike. Start it at the beginning of my workout and stop it when I'm finished. It gives me an 'average' HR and I use this site:

http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/heart-rate-based-calorie-burn-calculator.aspx

To estimate my calories burned based on my age, weight, height, sex, and duration of exercise. I would manually put this calorie burn amount into MFP. I eat back 100% (usually) of my exercise calories and have lost ~40lbs since joining MFP.

So...that's what worked for me but I know it's different for everyone and it's true you probably just have to pick a method and try it for a few weeks and then assess whether you lost, gained or stayed the same.

I will also mention that when I was at grad school and using the universities equipment that allowed you to put your age/weight into the machine and one that had those HRM on them....I found that their estimate of calories burned was about as accurate as the way I used above to estimate it so some machines are pretty good. The ones that are off are probably the ones that don't allow you to put in as much info or don't have built in HRM.