Strength exercises - no calories lost?

sfalcao14

Hello,

I was just wondering why there is no calorie loss when I add my strength exercises? Can anyone help?

nutmegoreo

You can log it under cardio as strength training. It will give you cals there.

WallBilly

It's because strength training doesn't burn many calories. Sure, you can burn calories if you do circuit training and get your heart rate up, but if you are resting between sets to recover, the calorie burn is negligible. You can go to bodybuilding websites and they'll all tell you that.

I wore a heart rate monitor for a couple of sessions last week to verify that. I do fairly heavy squats, overhead presses, and bench presses. I rest 2 minutes between sets. At the end of the day, counting the warm-up sets and work sets, I did 6-7 sets of 5 reps of each exercise, and my squat is 235 lbs for the last 3 sets. The heart rate monitor gave me 150 calories burned after 45 minutes. It's almost not worth counting it.

But I do count it. Go into the cardio section and create an exercise. I call mine "lifting". You can't use the same name that is already in their database. Then I assign it 200 calories/hour, and I add it manually on lift days.

You can wear a heart rate monitor during your workouts and measure how many calories it gives you.

sijomial

wwmilligan wrote: »

You can wear a heart rate monitor during your workouts and measure how many calories it gives you.

No - it will tell you your heart rate but it can't work out calories burned unless it's a very sophisticated device with different activity modes - it will grossly exaggerate. Lifting isn't an aerobic exercise remember.


OP - it's very hard to know accurately so the MFP strength training estimate under the cardio section (which is based on METS) is fine.

WallBilly

Well, the "Strength Training" activity in the cardio section suggests 287 calories per hour, which is over 40% higher than what my heart rate monitor gave me.

I also wear it while I'm playing ice hockey as a goalie, and the calories burned on the heart rate monitor have varied from 510 to 830 for the same 75 minute ice time, depending on how much action I get.

I understand that heart rate monitoring is not exact, and its accuracy varies with the exercise, but I'll take it over some general chart.

The MFP "Hockey, Ice" number is 957 calories for 75 minutes, and my friends that do not play goalie never get anywhere near that number either. With the 830 workout, I was about ready to die by the end.

Azdak

It's not that strength training doesn't burn calories, or even that the burn is insignificant (like anything else, it's what you do and how you do it).

It's just that it cannot be measured by any simple means, and there is no general chart, table, database, calculator, etc that is accurate.

The lack of a convenient measuring tool does not mean there is nothing to measure.

Azdak

wwmilligan wrote: »

Well, the "Strength Training" activity in the cardio section suggests 287 calories per hour, which is over 40% higher than what my heart rate monitor gave me.

I also wear it while I'm playing ice hockey as a goalie, and the calories burned on the heart rate monitor have varied from 510 to 830 for the same 75 minute ice time, depending on how much action I get.

I understand that heart rate monitoring is not exact, and its accuracy varies with the exercise, but I'll take it over some general chart.

The MFP "Hockey, Ice" number is 957 calories for 75 minutes, and my friends that do not play goalie never get anywhere near that number either. With the 830 workout, I was about ready to die by the end.

You can choose whatever number you want but, in your case, the HRM is not any more accurate than any other chart, database, etc. The difference in numbers between your workouts/games likely signifies that you put in more effort on the one day, but neither number by itself is reliable.

RoxieDawn

Here read up on these if you are interested,

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472