how to track/ log exercise burn...

MoveitlikeManda

so, I dont have a hr monitor and the only exercise I current log is the walks I track with map my walk.

but as of today (just now actually, sat her sweating like mad lol) Im starting to home work out videos, started today with Leslie Sansone 3 mile walk.
will be doing a mix of her walks and other dvd's Iv got laying around so its not the same every day in hope I wont get bored lol.

so how do I log this? if I have no way of knowing what im burning, I dont have the estimate of map my walk or any other way of tracking it.

so what do I do??

TIA x

MoveitlikeManda

or should i not log it at all?

dykask

If you want to eat back the calories you can log it under in the "EXERCISE" page. I think MFP is way too generous with calories though, so you might need to tweak the time until it gives you something reasonable. I see for walking you have to pick a speed.

MoveitlikeManda

ok thank you

rainbowbow

i would only eat back half the calories MFP gives you so you aren't overestimating.

MoveitlikeManda

rainbowbow wrote: »

i would only eat back half the calories MFP gives you so you aren't overestimating.

I only eat a small amount (if any) back from my the walks i log, so say it gave me 385 id probably eat less than the 85/100 at most.

when I first started in 2014 I didnt eat any back at all but mfp had already given my what i felt was a high calorie goal anyway

TavistockToad

i have always eaten 100% of my exercise cals that MFP gave me back and consistently lost, its a bit of an urban legend that MFPs cals are WAY out....

rainbowbow

TavistockToad wrote: »

i have always eaten 100% of my exercise cals that MFP gave me back and consistently lost, its a bit of an urban legend that MFPs cals are WAY out....

I guess this depends on your calorie goal and how much of a deficit you're running.

For someone like me, who maintains on roughly 1,600 cals a day (1,800 when i do cardio) eating back these exercise cals can and does undo an entire days deficit.

For example, i might burn 300 calories in 45 minutes on the eliptical and MFP says i burned 550.

MoveitlikeManda

ok, so what Iv done is looked at my logged walks and used that as a guide, so I took a walk roughly the same duration as my work out this morning, and have logged it as a "walk" using half the calories that I was given for my burn by map my walk.

does that sound ok, so iv not over estimated?

sijomial

mbaby86 wrote: »

ok, so what Iv done is looked at my logged walks and used that as a guide, so I took a walk roughly the same duration as my work out this morning, and have logged it as a "walk" using half the calories that I was given for my burn by map my walk.

does that sound ok, so iv not over estimated?

The "eat back only 50%" is just a group think and when applied across the board is really silly IMHO.
Each exercise is different, there's going to be good/bad/indifferent ways to estimate them depending on what you are doing.
Better to spend a little time finding a reasonable way to get estimates for your particular set of exercises.
And "reasonable" estimations plus consistency is all you need. If you don't get expected results over a period of weeks then make adjustments as required.

For walking personally I would use this formula to get an idea how what your app's estimates are like:
Net Walking calories Spent = (Body weight in pounds) x (0.30) x (Distance in miles)

robertw486

sijomial wrote: »

mbaby86 wrote: »

ok, so what Iv done is looked at my logged walks and used that as a guide, so I took a walk roughly the same duration as my work out this morning, and have logged it as a "walk" using half the calories that I was given for my burn by map my walk.

does that sound ok, so iv not over estimated?

The "eat back only 50%" is just a group think and when applied across the board is really silly IMHO.
Each exercise is different, there's going to be good/bad/indifferent ways to estimate them depending on what you are doing.
Better to spend a little time finding a reasonable way to get estimates for your particular set of exercises.
And "reasonable" estimations plus consistency is all you need. If you don't get expected results over a period of weeks then make adjustments as required.

For walking personally I would use this formula to get an idea how what your app's estimates are like:
Net Walking calories Spent = (Body weight in pounds) x (0.30) x (Distance in miles)

This.

There are a couple ways to go about figuring out exercise calorie burn. You can guess and use a percentage, then adjust based on weight loss/maintenance/gain. Or you can look more into realistic calorie burn and do the same, which might allow you to not worry about the percentages and eat back all of the (closer to realistic) calorie burn. I've tried to find methods and apps that give me numbers close to reality, so that way I don't have to factor in any percentages for logging or what I eat to recover/control weight.

And for anyone wondering where @sijomial got his numbers, here is the article from Runners World, and a search on the study will find the actual testing they did.

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

rainbowbow wrote: »

TavistockToad wrote: »

i have always eaten 100% of my exercise cals that MFP gave me back and consistently lost, its a bit of an urban legend that MFPs cals are WAY out....

I guess this depends on your calorie goal and how much of a deficit you're running.

For someone like me, who maintains on roughly 1,600 cals a day (1,800 when i do cardio) eating back these exercise cals can and does undo an entire days deficit.

For example, i might burn 300 calories in 45 minutes on the eliptical and MFP says i burned 550.

This is where MFP sometimes fails in my opinion. Quite a few exercises assume a certain intensity, and don't properly account for weight differences either. Based on that 45 minutes in your example, an elliptical workout for my weight states 566 calories. Which might be close at my weight, but would be high for someone like yourself that is obviously much lighter.

Any exercise that defaults to a set number of calories per minute is more prone IMO to being a bad estimate. Per the MFP default for elliptical, you would burn the same calories regardless of exercise intensity.