Calorie Calculator

LillysMomma09

How accurate is the exercise calorie calculator on here? I use my indoor bike a lot and was shocked at how many calories it said I burned, so I checked the figures on a few websites and found it pretty close with weight, distance and how long factored in. Today I'm moving lots of boxes at work, I've been at it for an hour and have about 2 more to go and with 2 hours of moving boxes it says I will have burned over 1000 calories!!! That just does not seem right. that is wayyyy too high. What do you all think?

LER67

I've wondered the same. When I do the elliptical machine at my gym it tells me I've burned around 400 calories, calculation on here comes back with 600 so I adjust to the lower figure. Same with circuit training, MFP says I'm burning over 380 in 30 minutes, seems high to me.

Ready2Rock206

I find the calorie calculations on here to be EXTREMELY high almost to the point of being ridiculous.

peleroja

Anecdotally, most people here seem to find that MFP's exercise calories are pretty inflated for them (me included.)

When I was losing weight I generally either didn't eat back the added calories or I'd eat back half if I felt like I needed more food, and my weight loss stayed around what I expected. Not eating back those calories gave me a cushion for those times I stole a couple bites off my husband's plate or didn't log a piece of candy or whatever.

I think the "divide in half" suggestion is pretty common and it's a good place to start. If you're losing more weight than expected and feeling tired or hungry a lot, you can certainly eat more of your exercise calories and still lose, but I think it's better to err on the side of not eating them all until you see how it's affecting you, as it sucks to feel like you're doing everything right but not lose weight because you're accidentally wiping out your deficit by eating back exercise calories that you didn't really earn.

LillysMomma09

Thank you all for your input. I appreciate it. I think I will start dividing the calculation in half and start there.