Calories burned from weight lifting

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digidoomed
digidoomed Posts: 151 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Since fitness trackers suck at tracking calories burned from strength training and I want to know how much I'm burning to account in my exercise calories, does anyone know how many calories I would burn in about 30 mins weight training and I'm 155lbs? I would say I lift moderately heavy with some days where I try to up the weight.

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  • steveko89
    steveko89 Posts: 2,216 Member
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    TL;DR to directly address your question; I'd say no more than 200 calories per 30 min session. Start there and adjust accordingly.

    Reasoning: 6'1" 172 lbs 28 y/o male here (for reference). I've not had good luck with a variety of HR monitors for tracking lifting either. I workout 75-90 minutes 3x/week and have back-calculated my maintenance TDEE since last July to average out to 2450. Desk job so I'd call it sedentary outside of intentional exercise, which most calculators spit out ~2200 cal before exercise. Since I only lift 3 days per week and the TDEE is assessed over the weekly average, the workout days would average 2783.333 to result in a weekly average of 2450, or 583 workout calories. For comparison, my Polar H7 heart rate monitor would easily give me 700+ per workout. I do a full body split about with about a 50/50 focus between strength and hypertrophy rep ranges (i.e. heavy squats and deadlifts 3 x 1-3 and pullups, bench, rows, presses 4 x 8+). Easy math if you round 583 to 600 and divide by 3 for the time, hence the guess of 200 calories per 30 min session.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Log your 30 minutes as strength training under CV part of your diary for a rough estimate based on your weight and METS.

    Definitely do not base your estimates on heart rate for what isn't an aerobic activity.
  • Bry_Fitness70
    Bry_Fitness70 Posts: 2,480 Member
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    My HRM calculates the same ballpark burn (3-5 calories per minute) as the default MFP "strength training" entry (3 per minute).
  • Azdak
    Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
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    Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »
    My HRM calculates the same ballpark burn (3-5 calories per minute) as the default MFP "strength training" entry (3 per minute).

    Actually, your HRM is giving you a random number that, by chance, correlates to a vague estimate. Neither your HRM nor MFP is calculating anything.

  • dougii
    dougii Posts: 678 Member
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    http://calorielab.com/burned/ This link will give you some estimates based on type of training and your weight. Rough but at least it is a jumping off point.

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