Weight training: accurately calculate calories?

pfebbo

Hey everyone. I'm new to this app and I have a question about calculating calories during weight/ strength training. How do you know how much you burn during an exercise? I usually do 2-3 moderate weight days a week. Nothing extreme, but I'd like to be able to add it to my diary.

Thanks!!!

petitehealth

ugh you'll notice that each forum turns into a debate. no reason to *kitten* on my suggestion when there really isn't another good way to get an accurate assessment. Guess I should have added that I mix cardio into my weight lifting routine and am happy with the HRM reads.

MeanderingMammal

petitehealth wrote: »

I use a Polar H7 Heart Rate Monitor to get a pretty completely inaccurate assessment of the calories burned during weight lifting.

Fixed that for you...

The only accurate method is to measure your range of movement and calculate from the distance that the weight moves.

Log is under cardio and then over time tweak according to your results

cwolfman13

calories from anaerobic activities like weight lifting are difficult to estimate given how many variables are involved...how much weight is lifted, how long are rest periods, etc...these are going to be radically different from individual to individual. It's not like running or something where there is a pretty easy algorithm of moving mass over a certain distance over a certain time to come to a reasonable estimate.

petitehealth wrote: »

I use a Polar H7 Heart Rate Monitor to get a pretty accurate assessment of the calories burned during weight lifting.

A HRM is going to be very inaccurate for anaerobic activities like weight lifting. Your HR is not directly correlated to your body's use of energy (calories)...if it were, I'd just have someone walk into my office and scare the bajebus out of every 5 minutes and just for go all this hard work.

You HR is used in an algorithm to estimate calories burned during a steady state aerobic activity...a steady state aerobic activity is required for the algorithm to be valid as it is a reasonable approximation of VO2 max that you are working...anaerobic activity does not provide such an approximation.

OP...basically when I logged I chalked it up to about 200 calories for 60 minutes...basically a number I pulled right out of my *kitten*...but it worked fine. The most important thing to do here is to watch your trends over the coming and adjust your targets as per what those trends are telling you. I.E...you're not losing or not losing at the rate (as an average) anticipated then drop calories a little...you're losing too fast, yeah..you can eat more.

Hornsby

Yea, an HRM is worthless for strength training when it comes to calorie counts. Unfortunately, most things are and it just requires some trial and error.

For the record, a LOT of people who lift either use the TDEE method for tracking calories or up their activity level in MFP and then just log their workouts as 1 calorie burned.

Jennloella

cwolfman13 wrote: »

A HRM is going to be very inaccurate for anaerobic activities like weight lifting. Your HR is not directly correlated to your body's use of energy (calories)...if it were, I'd just have someone walk into my office and scare the bajebus out of every 5 minutes and just for go all this hard work.

You HR is used in an algorithm to estimate calories burned during a steady state aerobic activity...a steady state aerobic activity is required for the algorithm to be valid as it is a reasonable approximation of VO2 max that you are working...anaerobic activity does not provide such an approximation.

hahah this cracked me up,best explanation of it I've seen!! Yes, the HRM is will not calculate your calories during lifting sessions.....

pfebbo

Thanks for the advice. I'm estimating about 100 for a 30 minute workout. I'll have to adjust it depending on results.

Extra thanks to the nice people. I'm mixing in cardio as well so hopefully this all works. Good luck.

3dogsrunning

pfebbo wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. I'm estimating about 100 for a 30 minute workout. I'll have to adjust it depending on results.

Extra thanks to the nice people. I'm mixing in cardio as well so hopefully this all works. Good luck.

Was there not nice people? Everyone seemed pretty helpful to me.

ucabucca

I use circuit training but I am not resting much between sets other than time to get from one exercise to another. It has been close for me for about a year.

petitehealth

Learned something new today. Thanks.

Asher_Ethan

I honestly typed into google, "Calories burned during weight lifting for 150 pound woman," and I used that, it's a little over, "calisthenics; low to moderate effort," so I actually use that one now and eat half of that and I'm still losing.

pfebbo

Hmm... Interesting advise. I'm around the same weight, so I might check out what Google has to say. From what I see somewhere around 3 calories a minute seems to be a decent estimate.

Guesstimating might be the best chance