Dumb question

Nobledictator78

Does anyone know how they figure out how many calories you lose in a particular exercise? Like I'm a large guy...very large and I know I burn more calories than some of you more fit folks out there, but the calorie calculators seem extremely high. Would be interested in any input from the masses.

shadow2soul

It's an estimate based on stats and likely the met value of said exercise. You could always manually cut the calorie burn in half when logging it if you feel it's to high.

Christine_72

I got myself a fitbit to figure that out for me It automatically syncs everything into mfp.

Poisonedpawn78

I was doing some testing with weight ranges to see how i should scale my exercise calories as i lose weight. It appeared to me that there was roughly a 3.5-4 calorie per lbs change on most calculators.

So a 200lb man would burn say 200 calories doing exercise X
a 300lb man would burn 550-600ish doing same exercise X

Its not 100% accurate because its not taking into account heart rate and such, but that appeared to be the rough convention being used. At least a good estimate.

kavahni

Try Spark People. Their calculator is not flaw free, but you do input your weight so it is probably more accurate.

NorthCascades

It really depends a lot on what type of exercise you're doing. For walking and running, you can figure it out yourself - very easily - with the Runners World formulas with plenty enough accuracy for weight loss. Riding a bike is harder to figure out because you're sitting down and not supporting your body weight, and because mass/distance doesn't work when you can coast.

Go with your best guess. Track what you eat and what you burn, then adjust your estimates after a month based on how fast you're actually losing weight.