Does MFP really overestimate exercise calories burned?
Ponkeen
Posts: 147 Member
Just wondering, as I have seen this mentioned in the threads. Has anyone reading actually put this to the test against another tracker? I would rather hear from those who have in fact put it to the test, or see a link to a reliable study, than hear people repeating what they have also read from other people in the forums here. Verifiable is preferred- how does one know for sure how reliable, or not, the exercise calorie tracking is?
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Depends on the exercise, the person, etc. You log your intake, you log your exercise, you monitor your weight loss (or lack thereof), and adjust over time. Any other approach is just trying to squeeze excessive accuracy out of inherently inaccurate measurements.0
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Unless you are using a heart rate monitor (and likely the chest strap variety) then you will not know exactly what you burned, and MFP is only making a guess based on averages and your information. Those who DO have such HRMs at their disposal have noticed a discrepancy. So to err on the side of caution it's generally recommended to only eat back 50%-75% of what it says for calories earned through exercise. If you do that and lose at a faster pace than planned, and are logging accurately (weighing solids, measuring liquids), then you know it's likely closer to accurate for your activity type and duration.0
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No. But it is very easy to log exercise inaccurately.
For example, there are some exercises which have descriptions such as "fast" or "vigorous effort" etc. It is very easy for someone to judge as "vigorous effort" what someone else would call "relaxed".
Also you need to be careful about times. You might e.g. spend 60 minutes doing calisthenics, but how much was actually exercising vs resting, talking to a friend etc?0 -
It's really hard to say but I'd say it's pretty close. When I do a 10k run on my treadmill it says I've burned about 1000 calories at about 7.6 mph. When I do my 10k run outside my nike app says it's closer to about 830. Mfp says about the same as my app. So I'm assuming they both aren't way off. I knew 1000 was a bit much on the treadmill so I just go with what my app and mfp says.0
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Thanks oilphins! That is what I was looking for- an actual test of some sort. The other feedback is helpful, too. I intentionally underestimate the amount of time I spend exercising in order to control for little breather moments, waiting at intersections, etc... I just wasn't sure beyond that if I could trust the count.0
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The only way to know if it is close is to closely monitor food intake, exercise, and weight loss over a long period of time (or possibly spend lots of money on a lab to calculate it for you).
Much like BMR or TDEE estimators, they are good for the general public, but a specific individual could be +/-10%.
For me personally, I think it is very accurate for the activities I log (mostly walking and strength training) with the exception of Ultimate Frisbee. I don't run constantly when playing ultimate, in fact, I stand around a lot. So the ultimate entry should be a good bit lower than a running entry for the same time period but instead it is only slightly under. So, I manually adjust that down to factor in me being tired and not running to cover anyone.0 -
The issue with counting calories from lifting weights especially if your lifting heavy (2-6 reps) is 2 minutes between sets your just sitting on your butt recovering for the next set. Take that that 2 minutes times 20 sets and you have 40 minutes of rest and 20 min of actually doing something if your lucky. Throw that into mfp and you get 800 calories burned which is more than likely 600 to many.. If your trying to lose weight and exercising to lose weight on a calories deficit why the hell would anyone want to eat the calories back is just beyond me.. Maintenance or muscle building yes eat some back to get at your unique calorie intake.0
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Michael190lbs wrote: »The issue with counting calories from lifting weights especially if your lifting heavy (2-6 reps) is 2 minutes between sets your just sitting on your butt recovering for the next set. Take that that 2 minutes times 20 sets and you have 40 minutes of rest and 20 min of actually doing something if your lucky. Throw that into mfp and you get 800 calories burned which is more than likely 600 to many.. If your trying to lose weight and exercising to lose weight on a calories deficit why the hell would anyone want to eat the calories back is just beyond me.. Maintenance or muscle building yes eat some back to get at your unique calorie intake.
60 minutes of strength training gives me ~250 calories, not 800 calories.0 -
I get 202 calories by logging 60 minutes of strength training. When I've used the MFP calorie goal, I've always eaten all of my calories back. I want to fuel my exercise. I also want to fuel my recovery. Recovery is a big part of building strength and building muscle and that takes energy. It's not all about how many calories are burned while actually lifting weights, IMO.0
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PrizePopple wrote: »Unless you are using a heart rate monitor (and likely the chest strap variety) then you will not know exactly what you burned, and MFP is only making a guess based on averages and your information. Those who DO have such HRMs at their disposal have noticed a discrepancy. So to err on the side of caution it's generally recommended to only eat back 50%-75% of what it says for calories earned through exercise. If you do that and lose at a faster pace than planned, and are logging accurately (weighing solids, measuring liquids), then you know it's likely closer to accurate for your activity type and duration.
I see the estimation factor with the calorie burn numbers generated by Garmin. When I don't wear the heart rate monitor, or the battery dies, Garmin produces higher calories burned than for similar runs when I do wear the monitor. I think I'm in pretty good cardio shape; someone else could see a difference in the opposite direction.
All calorie burn numbers are estimates, and the economic incentive for equipment makers is to overestimate the burn. That's why the common advice is not to eat back all the calories; they aren't all real.
That having been said, the base metabolic rate is also an estimate. It can be too high or too low for any given individual. Sometimes I think that most success stories are produced by people who (like myself) burn more calories than the canned estimates say they do, and that many of the "I can't lose weight" stories come from people who burn fewer calories than the canned estimates say they do.0 -
PrizePopple wrote: »Unless you are using a heart rate monitor (and likely the chest strap variety) then you will not know exactly what you burned, and MFP is only making a guess based on averages and your information. Those who DO have such HRMs at their disposal have noticed a discrepancy. So to err on the side of caution it's generally recommended to only eat back 50%-75% of what it says for calories earned through exercise. If you do that and lose at a faster pace than planned, and are logging accurately (weighing solids, measuring liquids), then you know it's likely closer to accurate for your activity type and duration.
I see the estimation factor with the calorie burn numbers generated by Garmin. When I don't wear the heart rate monitor, or the battery dies, Garmin produces higher calories burned than for similar runs when I do wear the monitor. I think I'm in pretty good cardio shape; someone else could see a difference in the opposite direction.
All calorie burn numbers are estimates, and the economic incentive for equipment makers is to overestimate the burn. That's why the common advice is not to eat back all the calories; they aren't all real.
That having been said, the base metabolic rate is also an estimate. It can be too high or too low for any given individual. Sometimes I think that most success stories are produced by people who (like myself) burn more calories than the canned estimates say they do, and that many of the "I can't lose weight" stories come from people who burn fewer calories than the canned estimates say they do.
I think these are really good points and observations. People would be well served by starting with the stock numbers and then adjust based on what actually happens when they follow them. And by follow them I mean actually eat to that level, not eat under it "just to be safe."0 -
Maybe the calorie counter device people secretly want people fat so they can sell us all products???0
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Yes, after 65 mins of elliptic training the machine max showed 500 cals burned, and that's if I push myself way too hard. MFP on the other hand shows around 700-800 calories for the same level of exercise. I enter what the machine says, not the app.0
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Here's screen shot, the first elliptical is from my activity monitor, the second is what MFP says I burned. My activity monitor is also less than what the machine says I've burned.
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I did a 5-mile run yesterday at a pretty steady HR. My HRM (chest strap) showed a burn of 650, and that included my warm-up and cool-down walks. MFP has me burning a total of 850 calories for the same time periods of walking and running. I know even my 650 from the HRM is probably high because I didn't wait for my HR to settle between activities.0
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I'm sure it depends greatly upon the type of exercise you are doing. I have found that my HRM and my Fitbit actually give me higher calorie burns than MFP in many cases, particularly when walking or running.0
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Thanks, guys! Some very helpful answers here.0
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WingardiumLeviosa91 wrote: »Yes, after 65 mins of elliptic training the machine max showed 500 cals burned, and that's if I push myself way too hard. MFP on the other hand shows around 700-800 calories for the same level of exercise. I enter what the machine says, not the app.
But you don't know which is more accurate unless you monitor food, exercise and weight loss. You just artificially picked the lower one because you wanted to.
Same with ScoobaSteve, does he really know that his activity tracker is more accurate, or is he blindly following it? Activity trackers are still doing estimations after all (granted, if I had to choose blindly I'd choose the activity tracker over MFP).
Again, it will vary per person and how they choose to log the activity in MFP (which can make a big difference too).0 -
I find it's pretty accurate for me for the exercises I do. But I've been pretty careful to align multiple sources of information: other trackers, HRM, and actual observed weight loss/gain over the long term.0
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I think it's accurate for some things, not for others, and it varies person by person.
The fact is that it's a lot easier to estimate some activities than others. If it knows how far you ran and in what time and how much you weigh, it should be pretty accurate. The only problem is that it doesn't deduct out how many calories you would have burnt anyway (neither do most apps or HRMs), which doesn't make much difference for a shorter run, but will throw off the calories quite a bit for a long run.
Walking is more affected by this, as is biking. Also, with biking, there are all kinds of things that vary the burn, like wind, the type of bike you ride, the terrain you are on, etc., which obviously cannot be taken into account in the estimate.
With something like the elliptical or circuit training or weight lifting or swimming it's going to depend on (A) what you do and (B) actual intensity. Many people perceive themselves as exercising intensely (because it is for them, they are out of shape) when it's not that intense in terms of what's meant, and so end up with an overstated exercise burn. I think that's why the elliptical (which presumes intense) often seems to be one of the worst offenders.
My "evidence" -- based on this analysis I used most of the burn from certain activities (like runs of 6 miles or less) and cut the calories from others varying amounts and generally had it work out consistently with what I expected to lose.
But of course there are other variable factors, so who knows.
Rather than worry about all this it makes sense to me to pick an approach and if you lose more or less than planned over a few weeks, adjust.0 -
I've used several elliptical machines, so I do follow my activity monitor blindly, that's the one thing that I know is constant. Don't have to worry about calibration or anything else. And hopefully my Vo2 is correct which makes it even more accurate than the machines. MFP estimates are more than any machine I've ever been on. I was just trying to show the OP the difference between the 2nordlead2005 wrote: »WingardiumLeviosa91 wrote: »Yes, after 65 mins of elliptic training the machine max showed 500 cals burned, and that's if I push myself way too hard. MFP on the other hand shows around 700-800 calories for the same level of exercise. I enter what the machine says, not the app.
But you don't know which is more accurate unless you monitor food, exercise and weight loss. You just artificially picked the lower one because you wanted to.
Same with ScoobaSteve, does he really know that his activity tracker is more accurate, or is he blindly following it? Activity trackers are still doing estimations after all (granted, if I had to choose blindly I'd choose the activity tracker over MFP).
Again, it will vary per person and how they choose to log the activity in MFP (which can make a big difference too).
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Just wondering, as I have seen this mentioned in the threads. Has anyone reading actually put this to the test against another tracker? I would rather hear from those who have in fact put it to the test, or see a link to a reliable study, than hear people repeating what they have also read from other people in the forums here. Verifiable is preferred- how does one know for sure how reliable, or not, the exercise calorie tracking is?
A lot depends on what kind of training that you do, for some things it's pretty reliable, for others it's very dependent on self reporting of actual exertion, so it can be a bit hit and miss.
I've done some comparative work for running, road cycling, mountain biking and walking.
I've used both Polar and Garmin HRMs, Runkeeper, Strava, Endomondo, Runtastic and MF assessments to get some idea. I've generally found MFP to be in the middle of the distribution curve with Endomondo being least conservative and Strava being most conservative. That's been on both Apple and Android phones. I also calculated manually.
In principle you could assess that the discrepancy is based on different apps taking different data inputs, but
I've also got access to a wide range of simulators, so taking a common data feed, from my Garmin, I an take the data through a pretty wide range of different approximation algorithms. Again a spread of results, although slightly narrower than the preceding.
What I'd observe is that the spread of results was reasonably narrow for running and road cycling, about 300 cals between highest and lowest for a 10 mile run burning about 1000cals, and a similar ride consuming about 1000cals. Spread for mountain biking was pretty broad, aout 600cals, but that's understandable and my Polar was by far the highest by about 400 cals from the paper calculation. For walking it was again a broad spread, again HR being highest, but that's very much because walking isn't an appropriate exercise to approximate using HR.
There are lots of things where there is no reliable way o estimate calorie expenditure, so it's near impossible to say whether it's overinflating actual effort or reported effort.
fwiw I'm a control engineer by training, hence having access to the simulators that most people aren't going to be able to get hold of.0 -
I see the estimation factor with the calorie burn numbers generated by Garmin. When I don't wear the heart rate monitor, or the battery dies, Garmin produces higher calories burned than for similar runs when I do wear the monitor. I think I'm in pretty good cardio shape; someone else could see a difference in the opposite direction.
All calorie burn numbers are estimates, and the economic incentive for equipment makers is to overestimate the burn. That's why the common advice is not to eat back all the calories; they aren't all real.
That having been said, the base metabolic rate is also an estimate. It can be too high or too low for any given individual. Sometimes I think that most success stories are produced by people who (like myself) burn more calories than the canned estimates say they do, and that many of the "I can't lose weight" stories come from people who burn fewer calories than the canned estimates say they do.I think these are really good points and observations. People would be well served by starting with the stock numbers and then adjust based on what actually happens when they follow them. And by follow them I mean actually eat to that level, not eat under it "just to be safe."nordlead2005 wrote: »WingardiumLeviosa91 wrote: »Yes, after 65 mins of elliptic training the machine max showed 500 cals burned, and that's if I push myself way too hard. MFP on the other hand shows around 700-800 calories for the same level of exercise. I enter what the machine says, not the app.
But you don't know which is more accurate unless you monitor food, exercise and weight loss. You just artificially picked the lower one because you wanted to.
Same with ScoobaSteve, does he really know that his activity tracker is more accurate, or is he blindly following it? Activity trackers are still doing estimations after all (granted, if I had to choose blindly I'd choose the activity tracker over MFP).
Again, it will vary per person and how they choose to log the activity in MFP (which can make a big difference too).
These 3 quotes pretty much sums it all up.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »I think it's accurate for some things, not for others, and it varies person by person.
The only problem is that it doesn't deduct out how many calories you would have burnt anyway (neither do most apps or HRMs), which doesn't make much difference for a shorter run, but will throw off the calories quite a bit for a long run.
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Many people perceive themselves as exercising intensely (because it is for them, they are out of shape) when it's not that intense in terms of what's meant, and so end up with an overstated exercise burn. I think that's why the elliptical (which presumes intense) often seems to be one of the worst offenders.
Big thumbs up for these two statements. I always subtract 2 kcal/min from every exercise I do to account for resting energy expenditure, and I never put the elliptical on intense - always moderate - even if I feel like I killed it.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »I think that's why the elliptical (which presumes intense) often seems to be one of the worst offenders.
The MET value for moderate Elliptical is the same as the MET for walking at an average pae on a level, hard surface. Lots of people seem to assume somewhat more effectiveness.
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MeanderingMammal wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I think that's why the elliptical (which presumes intense) often seems to be one of the worst offenders.
The MET value for moderate Elliptical is the same as the MET for walking at an average pae on a level, hard surface. Lots of people seem to assume somewhat more effectiveness.
Interesting. I hadn't heard that before. I typically get ~ 9 kcal/min net from the elliptical and 5 kcal/min net from walking.0 -
My heart rate monitor will show around 425-450 per hour on my ski machine. I have verified that with estimates calculated on pulse rate / my weight, etc.
MFP estimates it at 580. That's 900 calories every week that I would be over eating! It is definitely off with that exercise. MFP was also high in estimating walking calories.0 -
In my experience, for cycling MFP estimates 50-80% more calories than my Garmin Edge 800 estimates. The Edge takes into account my weight, my bicycle's weight, the terrain (up, down, or flat), my speed (because the power required to overcome wind resistance is proportional to the cube of the speed), my activity level (which I programmed in), and my maximum and resting heart rates. Its estimates match my actual weight loss pretty well, so I trust it.
My Garmin Forerunner 620 estimates I burn about 104-105 calories per mile running on flat ground at a pace of 7:30-8:00/mile. MFP estimates about 110. Not a huge difference, but it can add up over the course of a week.
In other words, I would eat way too many calories if I trusted MFP for cycling burns, and a little too much if I trusted it for running.0 -
MFP is overestimating by a factor of 40% for me. I log the results of my bicycle rides based on power recording from my power meter (closest one can get other than actual laboratory testing although some may frit about left only, left/right, and branding); however, I have not paid for laboratory testing to determine my calories efficiency and arbitrarily set that 25%. I'm probably closer to 22-23% which would raise the overestimation closer to 50%. I use virtual power (VP) to estimate calories from my walks (2.3 miles route, flat, and my pace is usually around 4-4.3mph) and they are roughly equal to MFP's estimates. I get more spikes and valleys with VP (probably due to GPS error) but it evens out on the long run. I have no ideal how accurate the VP is but the underlying equation used matches very well to the MFP's empirical extract at the intensity that I walk. The VP, the underlying equation, is really meant for running so I can't imagine both are based on the same empirical formula (which makes sense since the app's VP for cycling is based on fundamental physics). The app is call IpBike.0
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In my experience, for cycling MFP estimates 50-80% more calories than my Garmin Edge 800 estimates. The Edge takes into account my weight, my bicycle's weight, the terrain (up, down, or flat), my speed (because the power required to overcome wind resistance is proportional to the cube of the speed), my activity level (which I programmed in), and my maximum and resting heart rates. Its estimates match my actual weight loss pretty well, so I trust it.
My Garmin Forerunner 620 estimates I burn about 104-105 calories per mile running on flat ground at a pace of 7:30-8:00/mile. MFP estimates about 110. Not a huge difference, but it can add up over the course of a week.
In other words, I would eat way too many calories if I trusted MFP for cycling burns, and a little too much if I trusted it for running.
I also use a Garmin Edge 800 and find it significantly under estimates calories (10 - 20%) when compared to a power meter and a custom calibrated HRM.
Power meter and the HRM are just about identical when used under very controlled steady state riding, as soon as I get too hot they diverge very quickly. Ditto for intervals of course.
MFP's 14-16mph estimate is pretty reasonable but I find the spread in the 16-20mph far too wide, there's an enormous difference in real life between 16 and 20mph.
Everything is an estimate.......0
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