MFP's Exercise Calories More Accurate Than You Think?

HorrorGeekLiz

It took me a while to get to this point, but I'll just skip ahead to the main points to make this a bit more succinct.

I was really ready to just throw out my Fitbit Charge HR because I assumed that the high calorie burn it was giving me was ridiculous. Then I remembered a fitness point that after cardio, your calorie burn can be higher for up to 36 hours. I finally realized that my Fitbit was reflecting this - calories both during and after.

It finally hit me - what if MFP is doing this too?

For example - I have my Activity Level set at Sedentary because I have an office job. For my circuit training class, it gives me 550 calories. My Fitbit shows that during the class I really burn about 350. So, what if that 200 difference isn't really an inflated number. What if it is MFP's way of accounting for the afterburn difference between my cardio and my sedentary setting?

Thoughts?

jacksonpt

Everything I've read suggests that afterburn, in terms of calorie consumption, is fairly insignificant. I would not chalk up apparently high calorie estimates to afterburn.

IMO, estimating calorie burns is REALLY difficult to do. Ask 5 people to estimate and you'll get 10 different methods producing 20 different numbers.

IMO, It's an estimate. Treat it as such.

sijomial

Afterburn (EPOC) is for an extended period but still really insignificant in actual number of calories.

Strength training - a reasonable percentage but of a very small calorie burn.
HIIT - a small percentage of a small number.
Steady state cardio - a very small percentage of a potentially large number.

Everything is an estimate, don't sweat it - just make a reasonable and consistent estimates and make adjustments if you don't get expected results over time.

Your Fitbit isn't a calorie counter, it's just an estimate.