Basic Question About Logging Exercise

rolenthegreat

For the past year or so I've been spending about 6-10 hours a week taking aerial classes. About half of these classes are conditioning (basically 30 minutes of HIIT and then 30 minutes of flexibility training/yoga which is usually how I log them)

Sometimes the classes are more skill based around different apparatuses, silks/aerial hoop/trapeze/rope. These classes usually involve quite a bit of sitting, listening to instructors and watching other students. You still get very fatigued in these classes. I've been logging them as 'gymnastics' (since obviously there is no entry for 'aerial hoop') but logging them as a full hour of gymnastics seems inaccurate.
Does MFP account for the fact that you probably aren't ACTUALLY giving it 100% on a high intensity workout for an entire hour? Or does it actually expect me to be actively flipping myself upside down for the full hour?

I'm a 5'1" female, I'm just above 120lbs, I'd like lose ~5lbs to help show off the muscles I've been building, then I plan to go into recomp. So I'm not working with a very wide margin of error. I just bought a food scale and plan to start weighing my food, I just also want try to be more accurate logging my exercise.

JeromeBarry1

That's a toughie. It's the sort of complex issue that I think your best solution is a chest-strap heart rate monitor that can upload your activity to your mfp exercise diary. That's costy. The free way to guess at it is to assume that the time you spend sitting is not exercise, so if there's 30 minutes of HIIT you probably get a good guess with that, and if there's a database entry for yoga you probably get a good guess with that. You'll have to browse an exercise database to find something like your aerial hoop work.

rolenthegreat

JeromeBarry1 wrote: »

That's a toughie. It's the sort of complex issue that I think your best solution is a chest-strap heart rate monitor that can upload your activity to your mfp exercise diary. That's costy. The free way to guess at it is to assume that the time you spend sitting is not exercise, so if there's 30 minutes of HIIT you probably get a good guess with that, and if there's a database entry for yoga you probably get a good guess with that. You'll have to browse an exercise database to find something like your aerial hoop work.

I've started logging the apparatus classes as 30-45 minutes of activity instead of the full hour.
I was thinking a heart rate monitor might be the best way to get a more accurate caloric count. Not sure if I am ready for that kind of monetary commitment wanted to check the forums first.

lorrpb

You can create a custom exercise and assign the calorie Burn you feel is more accurate, such as 1/2 of the gymnastics burn. It's all an estimate, even with HRM. Have fun!

sijomial

I was thinking a heart rate monitor might be the best way to get a more accurate caloric count.

No it won't be - wrong kind of exercise to go by heart rate for calorie estimates.
Likely to exaggerate badly.

Your actual weight loss over many weeks tells you if your food and exercise logging is appropriate (doesn't even have to be accurate, consistent works too).

NorthCascades

rolenthegreat wrote: »

I was thinking a heart rate monitor might be the best way to get a more accurate caloric count.

It's not. A pair of dice will be slightly less accurate, but a whole lot cheaper.

rolenthegreat

sijomial wrote: »

No it won't be - wrong kind of exercise to go by heart rate for calorie estimates.
Likely to exaggerate badly.

I believe you, but I'm not sure I understand.
Is that because it's a more of a strength exercise than cardio? I'm kinda a newb to the whole 'recording calories' thing.

NorthCascades

Your heart isn't actually a calorie counter. Its job is to pump oxygenated blood throughout your body. Some clever person noticed that doing exercise causes your muscles to need more oxygen, which makes your heart rate go up. But so do a lot of things, like drinking caffeine, being stressed or excited, hot or cold weather, dehydration, etc.

There's programming that makes a lot of assumptions in order to guess calories from heart rates. When you do something (like run) that matches those assumptions fairly closely, the number you get is fairly close to the truth. When you do something that doesn't match the idealized and simplified rules in the programming, you get a random number that has little to do with what you did.

Saaski

Fellow aerialist here, and I know what you mean about sitting and listening to instructors, especially when you're just starting out. I count warm-ups as calisthenics since I'm usually doing those straight, and round down from class time. If my class is an hour and a half, I time how long I've done the warm up and count that (usually about 15 minutes of the calisthenics) and count 45 minutes of straight work (in an advanced class, where you go from apparatus to apparatus with little downtime). I use the gymnastic general setting and then halve the calories burned.

For the actual flexibility training, I use the "mild stretching" entry, since I am often in deep stretches for long periods of time. I do not alter calories burned for that one (mostly because I'm usually ending with handstand practice and for me, I just figure it evens out).

It's not an exact science (obviously), and the most you can really do is see what happens over a period of time. I'm also in the same boat as you; 5'6' female, 140 lb, trying to lower my body fat percentage a bit so I have more muscle definition. There really isn't a lot of wiggle room, so I understand the frustration.

rolenthegreat

Saaski wrote: »

Fellow aerialist here, and I know what you mean about sitting and listening to instructors, especially when you're just starting out. I count warm-ups as calisthenics since I'm usually doing those straight, and round down from class time. If my class is an hour and a half, I time how long I've done the warm up and count that (usually about 15 minutes of the calisthenics) and count 45 minutes of straight work (in an advanced class, where you go from apparatus to apparatus with little downtime). I use the gymnastic general setting and then halve the calories burned.

For the actual flexibility training, I use the "mild stretching" entry, since I am often in deep stretches for long periods of time. I do not alter calories burned for that one (mostly because I'm usually ending with handstand practice and for me, I just figure it evens out).

It's not an exact science (obviously), and the most you can really do is see what happens over a period of time. I'm also in the same boat as you; 5'6' female, 140 lb, trying to lower my body fat percentage a bit so I have more muscle definition. There really isn't a lot of wiggle room, so I understand the frustration.

Thanks, this all helps. My instructors love active stretching so I figure the yoga entry in MFP fits that pretty well.

It's just kind of hard to gauge because some classes we'll climb the silks 15ft 8 times in 20 minutes. Other classes we'll spend half an hour just learning to wrap a single drop. Which might be a lot of arm work but isn't terribly taxing.

I'm already in the '1200cal' club because of my size & working a very non-taxing desk job. Just trying to get a better idea on how accurate my cal count is. I'll play around with recording the numbers a bit more over the next couple weeks and see how it goes. Not super worried about my weight but would like a bit more muscle definition showing.

rolenthegreat

@NorthCascades Thanks, that all makes perfect sense. Maybe I'll still get a pair of fuzzy dice though.

Cat3141

I do pole, which is similar in some ways. Back when I used to log exercise, I would do something similar to what Saaski describes, that is log conditioning as calisthenics, and stretching as light stretching. For the rest of class (or practice) time, I'd estimate how much active time I spent, and log that as gymnastics. Depending on what I was doing that day and whether I was sharing a pole, it might be most of the class time, or it might be only part of the time. There is lots of room in error in there everywhere, so it may take some adjustment for you to reach your goals.

As a side note, I'd be careful about restricting calories, as it will impact your performance and ability to progress.

sijomial

rolenthegreat wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

No it won't be - wrong kind of exercise to go by heart rate for calorie estimates.
Likely to exaggerate badly.

I believe you, but I'm not sure I understand.
Is that because it's a more of a strength exercise than cardio? I'm kinda a newb to the whole 'recording calories' thing.

There's a whole bunch of reasons why HR has a worse relationship to calories than many on here believe.
Here's a few:

Personal variation from average - I was in a gym using a power meter equipped training bike (using power to estimate energy is a far more reliable method if available) - three of us training, all putting out 200 watts (so effectively the same calorie burn), my HR is 150, guy on my left 190 (I would expire before reaching that!), guy on my right is at 130bpm.

Strength training - totally unsuitable, it's not an aerobic exercise primarily.

Cardio intervals - the recovery intervals aren't burning much energy but your HR is still elevated. I managed to calibrate a HRM (including having a VO2 max test, max HR test in a sports science lab) so that for steady state cardio under perfect conditions it matched a power meter almost perfectly. But for interval training I can see a 25% exaggeration.

If the end unless you want/need to know your HR then don't get a HRM!

rolenthegreat

Cat3141 wrote: »

I do pole, which is similar in some ways. Back when I used to log exercise, I would do something similar to what Saaski describes, that is log conditioning as calisthenics, and stretching as light stretching. For the rest of class (or practice) time, I'd estimate how much active time I spent, and log that as gymnastics. Depending on what I was doing that day and whether I was sharing a pole, it might be most of the class time, or it might be only part of the time. There is lots of room in error in there everywhere, so it may take some adjustment for you to reach your goals.

As a side note, I'd be careful about restricting calories, as it will impact your performance and ability to progress.

I 100% understand the 'restricting calories' thing. I always eat significantly more than 1200cal on gym days.
My TDEE is somewhere around 1500, so I am barely at the -.5lb a week mark.

I've used MFP off & on for years so I 'get it', but I'm still kinda a newb to actually working out regularly. Only been back for a week this time, trying to pay more attention to macros to get everything a little better in line, I'm really not looking for anything drastic, just hoping lower the body fat% a little bit before I focus on building more muscle.