Over estimating exercise calories

Silentpadna

The_Enginerd wrote: »

ahoy_m8 wrote: »

JeromeBarry1 wrote: »

One day I got the notion to prove that my cardio machine in my living room couldn't possibly be helping me burn 1000 calories each hour. In the previous 7 days, I use used that machine several times to log many thousands of calories exercise burned. Also in the previous 7 days, I had meticulously weighed and recorded each food item. using my Reports of net calories and weight, I calculated the weight loss and the calorie deficit from the supposedly inaccurate cardio exercise, and derived my expected weight loss.

Actual and derived weight loss matched.

The one time I tried to prove that my cheap little knock-off of a nordic-track could not possibly be letting me burn 1000 calories an hour, I failed. Instead, I proved that a week of numbers matched the "1 lb fat = 3500 calories" rule.

How did you determine start & end weight (e.g. 7-day rolling average, 10-day low, etc.)? I keep a running average of TDEE, and the result varies wildly with a tiny weight fluctuation. It seems like body weight accuracy is the weak link in the calculation. And my normal fluctuation is relatively small --2 lb at most. That leaves me exactly where @allyphoe is... it takes months of data --not one week-- to average out the fluctuations.

Seconded. 7 days is not NEARLY enough time to separate fat losses from normal weight fluctuations. I would want a minimum of 90 days before I'd consider the data somewhat useful, and even then some smoothing would be required to filter out daily fluctuations. This is my raw daily weigh in data while in maintenance. I swing plenty of plenty of water weight due to lower/higher days and training.

That graph is gold. I think you would see similar fluctuations if you weighed yourself multiple times in a day - I do because I'm an engineer and a nerd (love that username BTW) - and I love data and stats. And I argue that there is no "best time to weigh yourself for the best 'accuracy'" because of this very thing.

heiliskrimsli

NorthCascades wrote: »

mhwitt74 wrote: »

I'm not saying I disagree with you folks but I do find it odd that there are a million post or replies that say exercise calories burnt are overestimated. And it doesn't seem to matter where they come from they are all over estimated. Then there is the fact that there is no one way to accurately measure calorie burn. So if it is "common knowledge" that every number is inflated why isn't there some formula to get it closer. And wouldn't there be at least one, if not a few, calculators or machines like treadmills etc that underestimate the calories burned? I'm just saying that there has to be yin to the yang right?

The bold part is not reality.

The most accurate way is with a mask strapped to the face that measures the CO2 output. Not feasible for most people, but there are useful data from these observations that can give reasonable estimates.

mhwitt74

NorthCascades wrote: »

mhwitt74 wrote: »

I'm not saying I disagree with you folks but I do find it odd that there are a million post or replies that say exercise calories burnt are overestimated. And it doesn't seem to matter where they come from they are all over estimated. Then there is the fact that there is no one way to accurately measure calorie burn. So if it is "common knowledge" that every number is inflated why isn't there some formula to get it closer. And wouldn't there be at least one, if not a few, calculators or machines like treadmills etc that underestimate the calories burned? I'm just saying that there has to be yin to the yang right?

The bold part is not reality.

How so?