tracking exercise

LovesDogsAndBooks

I'm new here and have browsed the forums for information on how to track calories burnt through exercise. Some people seem to use a heart rate monitor, then there's the database for exercises, which a lot of people seem to say vastly overestimates the calories burnt. I usually alternate 45 min treadmill (not running, but walking 3.6 - 3.2 mph on an incline of 4 - 6) one day and about an hour of weight training with dumbbells and kettle bells plus squats, crunches etc. I am hesitant to log any exercise in my diary because I think it might make me overeat. How do you track your exercise, or do you just eat your daily target and ignore the exercise?

Ready2Rock206

Personally I set my daily calorie goal higher to account for the fact I exercise and don't log it.

If you're using MFP calorie goal you really should log/eat something for the exercise you do. It gave you that goal with the expectation you'd be eating exercise calories. Getting more weight loss from making a bigger deficit may seem nice but not if you're losing lean muscle mass in the process or start burning out from inadequate nutrition.

NorthCascades

Almost everybody eats back their exercise calories. Some people like to guess ahead of time how many calories they'll burn for an entire week, other people like to have a machine guess for them how many calories they're burning while they exercise, from whatever information is available at the time (like heart rate, power output, etc). While the math is different with these approaches, the underlying theme is the same. If you drive your car more, you put more gas in it.

I use a watch to track the exercise I do. I'm primarily a cyclist, so I have a GPS watch that talks to my power meter and other sensors. I tell it when I start and stop a ride, and it works everything else out, puts it on my calendar, tells me when I need to lubricate my chain or replace my tires, etc. It also sends the calorie data here to tell me exactly how much more to eat to compensate for what I've done.

LovesDogsAndBooks

Thanks! I would like to be as accurate as possible, am just having trouble figuring out how to do so. Is the heart rate thing only good for cardio? What else do people use to calculate weightlifting exercises? By no means do I want to increase my deficit by not logging exercise, I just don't want to overestimate and then eat back more than I actually burnt.

NorthCascades

Heart rate monitors aren't even great for guestimating calories from cardiovascular exercise. They're great for telling you your pulse rate, though!

For walking, your best bet is to use a formula that takes your body weight into account, along with the distance you walked and how much elevation you gained.

For weight lifting, it's much more complicated. You don't burn many calories lifting, but there isn't a good way to know how many. If you're trying to lose weight, it's probably best to stick to a rule of thumb, I assume I burn about 200 to 250 kCal per hour lifting.

LovesDogsAndBooks

I think for now I'll just log the treadmill then, seems like trying to figure out all the different weight exercises is way too complicated, at least for me. Thank you!