How Many Calories Are You Burning??

blancoms

I've been burning anywhere from 400-1000 doing zumba. I wear a HRM and deflate its calorie burn by 10-15%. I'm still trying to figure out if/how much more I need to eat from exercising as obviously 1000 is quite a bit.

Ninkyou

125-150 calories for 30 minutes seems to be current average.

It takes me about 3 hours of hiking (and being 30+ lbs heavier) to even come close to 900 calorie burns, so I'd question your calorie burns a bit.

drachfit

Losing 2lbs / week at an average daily intake of 2900cals. This suggests I have a true defecit of ~1000cal/day. I don't know my Sedentary TDEE but calculators suggest it is around 2200 cal/day.

So if my maintenance is 3900 cal/day and my BMR is 2200/day, then i suppose I am burning 1700/day through exercise. About an hour of cardio each morning accounts for ~600 of that. 2-3 hours strength training or climbing in the evenings adds... 200-300 cals? And a 10-hour hike in the snow on saturday adds about 2000 calories / 7 = 285cal/day average extra burn. That only gets me to 1300 cals burned.

maybe the strength training burns more calories than I thought, but more likely is that my BMRR is somewhat higher than what the calculators say. If it's 2500-2600 instead then that means I'm burning about 1300/day. Or my 2lbs a week loss has some error and maybe i am only losing ~1.5 or 1.75lbs/week. or a pound of fat is not quite 3500 calories. or i am systematically over-counting something in my food log (but it's OK, because i am still meeting my weight loss goals)

There is no such thing as "too many calories burned" through exercise unless you aren't eating enough of them back. Any caloric defecit that is too large is unhealthy if sustained for a long term. ~1000cal defecit is about the maximum recommended, maybe 1500 if you are obese or very talented at dieting.

gdyment

I'm over 10/min but not by a ton. My BS/something wrong alarm triggers at the 900+/hr line - especially on a bike.

1400 for 1:55 at moderate run pace a few days ago, 1250 in 90 mins for a race.

scorpio516

blues4miles wrote: »

Most people max out at 10 calories/minute. Even athletes.

Source?
Cause you burn about 5KCal per L of VO2. Using lab numbers, Chris Froome can burn almost 30 KCal a minute...
VO2Max is 84.6, weighs 69.9kg, which means 5.9 L per minute. Needless to say, VERY few people can do that, but it's physically possible.
At 70 kg, anyone with a VO2Max of 57 can burn 20 KCal in a minute. A 57 is strong, but only predicts to a 17:50 5k. Not world class by any stretch.

Michael Joyner at the Mayo Clinic says 15-20 cal/min is normal for an althlete.

robertw486

Kelley0519 wrote: »

Hello all -

About how many calories are you burning on a daily basis? I work out once sometimes twice a day... I'm burning anywhere from 400-1000 calories per day. Also, how many calories burned a day is too many? That may seem like a silly question lol I want to up my calories burned per day but don't want to overdo it.

Thanks!

@Kelley0519

Even assuming you can get exact calorie counts, I would define "too many" as when you can't properly eat and refuel for the rest of that days tasks, or for the next day. Though it's easy to over train in some forms of exercise, unless you put in a really long and hard exercise day the primary concern is the ability to deal with the next day. It's really fairly hard to overdo it on an overall scale, unless you don't eat enough for what you are doing and seriously deplete yourself. Even then, recovery can be fairly quick.




Below are a couple of ways you might nail down what is closer to correct for you in calorie burn.

runnersworld.com/weight-loss/how-many-calories-are-you-really-burning

The chart at the bottom contains the source, which is a peer reviewed study and can be found on Google Scholar searches.

exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

Another good one IMO, and if you do the math, will come out very close for walking and running to the link above. I would think that for the stair stepper as long as you enter in the incline correctly it should be close. Obviously different muscles will be used in the feet and lower legs, but you are essentially going up the same grade, steps or not.

Some machines are very accurate, others are not. Many of them calculate gross calorie burn, and since MFP already accounts for your RMR, the net calorie burn is usually preferred to use here.

Any exercise where you are supporting your weight is greatly influenced by your weight, since its' part of the mass x velocity math involved.

I would not say 400-1000 calories a day is difficult, and I don't consider myself any form of elite athlete. But only you know the specifics of your size and workout intensities.


It sounds like you are already using your weight as the feedback loop. Really what the numbers are don't matter if you do that to adjust your weight maintenance or loss goals. You could even do it without having numbers if you notice how your clothes fit.

Also as a general note, intensity for your size will dictate how taxing any workout type will be, and recovery of the same. I can go for hours at a slower pace, but feel more wiped out doing just a half hour or hour of higher intensity stuff. So even in terms of daily calorie burn, it's not all really the same.

blues4miles

gdyment wrote: »

I'm over 10/min but not by a ton. My BS/something wrong alarm triggers at the 900+/hr line - especially on a bike.

1400 for 1:55 at moderate run pace a few days ago, 1250 in 90 mins for a race.

Based on what though, your HRM? Mine gives me more than 10/min sometimes too because I am obese and get a pretty good heart rate when I jog. Then I laugh at it and put less into MFP. I think my max HR being slightly higher than the age calculators predict slightly mess up the results as well. I think an HRM for cardio would be the closest you could get to a best guess but at the end of the day I don't want to be losing less than I should or worse, gaining weight, just because I overestimated.

kcjchang

scorpio516 wrote: »

I can easily burn just about 1000 calories in 1 hour on my bike, averaging about 20 mph @ 170 lbs.

277 watts average (3.59 w/kg), pretty impressive but your average speed is bit odd unless there's some elevation gain. At 163.6 pounds, my best one hour average power for the January is 260 watts (3.50 w/kg) at an average speed of 18.2 mph with a net elevation gain of 1,001' (1,594' of climbing and 593' of decent during the hour in question). On flats my average power required for 21 mph is 221 watts (2.96 w/kg) based on a snip it of my 2/6 ride and the weather report has the wind speed at ~4 mph. So I figuring at 20 mph I'm pumping out 220-230 watts with no wind. We are talking about just the work done from the activity itself, right?

scorpio516 wrote: »

blues4miles wrote: »

Most people max out at 10 calories/minute. Even athletes.

Source?
Cause you burn about 5KCal per L of VO2. Using lab numbers, Chris Froome can burn almost 30 KCal a minute...
VO2Max is 84.6, weighs 69.9kg, which means 5.9 L per minute. Needless to say, VERY few people can do that, but it's physically possible.
At 70 kg, anyone with a VO2Max of 57 can burn 20 KCal in a minute. A 57 is strong, but only predicts to a 17:50 5k. Not world class by any stretch.

Michael Joyner at the Mayo Clinic says 15-20 cal/min is normal for an althlete.

For January, my Calories per minute averages out to be 12.15 or 731 Calories per hour. The average is from 22 rides with total moving time of 44:42:39 covering 809.1 miles (only 449.1 miles was outdoors with elevation gain of 16,162') and 32,693 kj of work. Cal/min is actually slight higher since it a rough 1:1 conversion from kj to Cal. My efficiency cannot be that high. It's probably around 22-23% whereas the lazy convention assumes 25%. My work stats are derived from an power meter, Stages, which has an accuracy of +/-2%. At 48 and only riding for the last year and half after a 23+ years hiatus from the sport, I only a shadow of when I was racing collegiate.