Crossfit Calorie Tracking

sicahjes
sicahjes Posts: 7 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Are there any Crossfitters out there? How do you track how many calories you burn? Would love some recommendations for fitbits and the like, or your experience as to whether or not they're a worthwhile investment.

TIA :-)

Replies

  • eileent76
    eileent76 Posts: 9 Member
    I don't track a specific calorie burn, I use a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculation based on my week's activity.
  • desireenagid
    desireenagid Posts: 2 Member
    I do Crossfit! I track using the Fitbit Charge 2. I like it and it does track calories, steps, sleep patterns, heart rate comma and tracks calories burned during various types of workouts but I honestly have no idea how accurate it is for measuring calories burned during those work-outs.
  • sicahjes
    sicahjes Posts: 7 Member
    Thanks
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
    sicahjes wrote: »
    Are there any Crossfitters out there? How do you track how many calories you burn? Would love some recommendations for fitbits and the like, or your experience as to whether or not they're a worthwhile investment.

    TIA :-)

    Just log it as circuit training.

    There is no reliable way to track it. Using something like a FitBit it HRM is about as good as throwing three dice.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Activity trackers and HRMs would be useless for estimating calories for that kind of workout.
    I would use the "circuit training" entry in the database but I do feel it's rather generous for calories.


    Activity tracker - not for me but if it motivates you to move more day to day then perhaps a good investment.

    HRM - if you are serious about cardio fitness then maybe, but as a training aid.
    May give a somewhat reasonable calorie estimate for a small subset of cardio training if you happen to be of average fitness and have an average exercise HR. More expensive ones can be quite good but may still require some calibration.
  • sicahjes
    sicahjes Posts: 7 Member
    Thanks everyone. I don't need motivation all that much, I love Crossfit. I was just hoping for a way to calculate calories burned, but I guess I can't do that accurately. Thanks again :smile:
  • stormcrow2
    stormcrow2 Posts: 33 Member
    You can base it on heart rate, but wrist HRM are bad at crossfit and weight lifting. A chest HRM will give you a decent approximation for calorie burn.
  • Azdak
    Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
    For crossfit, a HRM, even a chest strap, will be about as accurate counting calories as the "rolling three dice" method mentioned earlier. At most, you will burn around 350-400 net calories, so you really don't need to know whether it's 295 or 332 or 366, etc--esp since even a metabolic cart could not measure it exactly.
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
    stormcrow2 wrote: »
    A chest HRM will give you a decent approximation for calorie burn.

    Doesn't much matter how you measure HR, it's a poor quality proxy to use as the basis for an approximation
  • Muscle_for_Fitness
    Muscle_for_Fitness Posts: 2,198 Member
    eileent76 wrote: »
    I don't track a specific calorie burn, I use a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculation based on my week's activity.

    Same thing as this
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    If you are pretty consistent with what you're doing, you might want to consider using the TDEE method and just roll up all of your activity, including your exercise into your activity level and just get a set amount of calories to eat rather than trying to estimate that energy expenditure to log and eat back.

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