I'm confused about strength training and why no burn calories on mfp?

AZTallguy

I'm just trying to get everything clear. When we enter cardio workouts in the diary, it gives us our burned calories. Why does strength training not do the same? To me, it seems like it is energy used, so shouldn't it count too? What am I missing?

FullOnBurn

If you go under Cardio, there is, or at least I have one, for "Strength Training"

TR0berts

The two big reasons:

1) Strength training (if we're talking real strength training - not circuit training) doesn't burn jack for Calories.

2) It all depends on the amount of work you really did.


That said, you can log "strength training" under the cardio option. It'll give you a ridiculous amount of Calories burned.

AllanMisner

Technically, yes, you are burning calories to lift weights. I believe the assumption for MPF is that if you’re lifting, you’re not interested in keeping a deficit Also, it is very difficult to figure out how many calories you are burning during a lifting session because there are far too many variables (weight, range of motion, size of muscles engaged, time under tension, etc.).

But this brings me to the main point, all of this is about estimates. How much you eat, how much you burn. It’s all an estimate. Yes, even if you weigh the food, there is still some give or take. A medium apple might be listed at 100 calories, but what if my apple is 5% bigger than your apple? Do you still think both of them have the same calories? And how many calories you burn are even more of a guestimate.

Given all that, keep logging if it works for you (it does for most people as it keeps them eating less). Eat to perform the workouts you’re doing (weight training requires protein and energy to do well). I always eat about 200 - 400 calories more on my lifting days. If you find you’re not getting results for more than a week or so, tweak things.

AZTallguy

FullOnBurn - Thanks, I see that now.

TR0berts - So I do 5 days of 40 reps of crunches, pushups, squats and other small things. Is that not big enough to worry about and move on? I'm feeling I (we) should log that and be able to see the burns to attribute weight changes.

xmichaelyx

I can do a half-assed lifting session for 30 minutes and burn little more than I would sitting at a desk. Or I can do a hardcore 30-minute lifting session and burn many times that.

There are too many variables to be able to say, "Lifting burns X calories per hour." In cardio like jogging those variable (height, weight, age, speed, distance) are easily tracked to create a viable estimate. Not so with lifting.

Unknown

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AZTallguy

Okay, thanks everyone! That helps a lot. I was just wondering if there were different physics at work involved between cardio and strength but now I see it's just undefinable.

MKEgal

Under cardio, search for:
Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)

Since I generally don't eat back my exercise calories, it doesn't matter how accurate the MFP estimates are, but it's nice to see that I'm getting some credit for my work.
I used to log it under strength training, how many reps of what weight on which machine, but when I realized there was no reward I stopped.