Strength training-- how do you determine exercise calories?

katiebug3268

I'm not going to lie...I just trusted MFP and since the calorie burn was always so low I always thought it was correct. But about a week ago, my Aunt gave me her old FitBit surge and we reset the settings to customize my current weight, height, etc so it could accurately track my calories burned when lifting weights depending on my heart rate.

I was surprised of the calories I burned today just by lifting weights. I think it was around 350 calories for my 60 minute Marc Megna AMP leg day which my average heart rate was around 140s.

I guess ultimately it depends on your heart rate, weight, height, and intensity of your workout. I never eat back my calories right now because I am trying to cut.

Good luck and I hope this helped.

MegaMooseEsq

I've been using my Apple Watch to track body weight exercises for several months, and, starting this month, weight lifting, and am losing as expected based on my net numbers. I just looked at the lifting sessions and the watch is giving me about 4 calories a minute, a bit higher than @jjpptt2 and @sg1372 are using, but I believe they are both male and in better shape than I am. I'm also rolling a 5 minute cardio warm-up and 5 minute stretching cool-down in there, so who knows. Calorie counting is really just trying to guess as accurately and consistently as possible - there's no practical way to be precise about any aspect of it. Pick a method that sounds reasonable and healthy, do it consistently for a couple of months, and see what happens.

not_a_runner

katiebug3268 wrote: »

I'm not going to lie...I just trusted MFP and since the calorie burn was always so low I always thought it was correct. But about a week ago, my Aunt gave me her old FitBit surge and we reset the settings to customize my current weight, height, etc so it could accurately track my calories burned when lifting weights depending on my heart rate.

I was surprised of the calories I burned today just by lifting weights. I think it was around 350 calories for my 60 minute Marc Megna AMP leg day which my average heart rate was around 140s.

I guess ultimately it depends on your heart rate, weight, height, and intensity of your workout. I never eat back my calories right now because I am trying to cut.

Good luck and I hope this helped.

Fitbits/heart rate monitors are generally not going to be very accurate for lifting cals either, unfortunately.
(Or TDEE in general, mine has never been anywhere near accurate)

sijomial

katiebug3268 wrote: »

I'm not going to lie...I just trusted MFP and since the calorie burn was always so low I always thought it was correct. But about a week ago, my Aunt gave me her old FitBit surge and we reset the settings to customize my current weight, height, etc so it could accurately track my calories burned when lifting weights depending on my heart rate.

I was surprised of the calories I burned today just by lifting weights. I think it was around 350 calories for my 60 minute Marc Megna AMP leg day which my average heart rate was around 140s.

I guess ultimately it depends on your heart rate, weight, height, and intensity of your workout. I never eat back my calories right now because I am trying to cut.

Good luck and I hope this helped.

@katiebug3268

Ref the bold - your HR isn't a good guide to lifting calories at all though, going to be vastly inflated. It's not an aerobic exercise for a start.
What the burns really relate to is physics not biology, mass moved over distance, the more weight you move the bigger the burn.

colors_fade

stanmann571 wrote: »

How are your hair and fingernails doing? And your energy levels?

Also, How long have you been doing this?

I'm perfectly healthy, thank you.

I don't train for marathons and I don't do insane 3-hour workouts.

I lift 5-6 times per week, a push/pull split. I'm in the gym for about an hour a day. I've been lifting for almost 6 years. When the weather is nice I walk for 30-60 minutes outside in addition to the lifting.

I've been cutting since July. I've had my most successful weight loss this year, since July (-20 lbs.). I stalled out in December because... I like to eat and discipline for an extended period of time is something I struggle with. But that's another story for another thread.

Energy Levels are always going to be lower than normal on a deficit. That's just a fact of math. My energy levels are not so low as to be debilitating. It's the same energy level you'd expect from someone in a moderate caloric deficit.

Studies show that people overestimate their workout calorie burns (and underestimate their calories consumed). I'd rather error on the side of an unknown deficit than overestimate my burn and end up not being in a deficit at all.

I mean, c'mon - how many times have you logged into this message board to read people saying things like, "I'm counting my calories and everything and not losing!" And when you finally get all the details from them and do the math, they are either underestimating consumed calories, overestimating workout calorie burns, or both.

There are outliers and caveats to everything. If you're the type of person doing a lot of HIIT, or cardio, or training for a sport, or some kind of intense exercise frequently, sure, it makes sense to try and calculate those calories because you may end up in a large deficit.

But people here are trying to lose fat/weight when they're asking these sorts of questions. High intensity training and huge workout calorie burns are not their problem... not being in a deficit usually is.

deputy_randolph

I'm 5'3, 140, 38...and maintain around 2100-2200. I powerlift (lift 5 days a week + low intensity cardio) and am a sp. ed. teacher (fairly active job; I'm on my feet for the majority of work day).

I estimate that for 2 hours of intense lifting (not lifting the WHOLE 2 hrs 3-5 minute rest btwn heavy compound sets) about a 300 calorie "burn."

I used the strength training option in MFP to successfully bulk and cut a few times. Use MFP settings and then adjust as needed.

cwolfman13

colors_fade wrote: »

stanmann571 wrote: »

How are your hair and fingernails doing? And your energy levels?

Also, How long have you been doing this?

I'm perfectly healthy, thank you.

I don't train for marathons and I don't do insane 3-hour workouts.

I lift 5-6 times per week, a push/pull split. I'm in the gym for about an hour a day. I've been lifting for almost 6 years. When the weather is nice I walk for 30-60 minutes outside in addition to the lifting.

I've been cutting since July. I've had my most successful weight loss this year, since July (-20 lbs.). I stalled out in December because... I like to eat and discipline for an extended period of time is something I struggle with. But that's another story for another thread.

Energy Levels are always going to be lower than normal on a deficit. That's just a fact of math. My energy levels are not so low as to be debilitating. It's the same energy level you'd expect from someone in a moderate caloric deficit.

Studies show that people overestimate their workout calorie burns (and underestimate their calories consumed). I'd rather error on the side of an unknown deficit than overestimate my burn and end up not being in a deficit at all.

I mean, c'mon - how many times have you logged into this message board to read people saying things like, "I'm counting my calories and everything and not losing!" And when you finally get all the details from them and do the math, they are either underestimating consumed calories, overestimating workout calorie burns, or both.

There are outliers and caveats to everything. If you're the type of person doing a lot of HIIT, or cardio, or training for a sport, or some kind of intense exercise frequently, sure, it makes sense to try and calculate those calories because you may end up in a large deficit.

But people here are trying to lose fat/weight when they're asking these sorts of questions. High intensity training and huge workout calorie burns are not their problem... not being in a deficit usually is.

Yeah..but there are a lot of people...women in particular who crash their calories to 1200 and then go and do an hour or two of cardio and end up netting very low calories. There are a plethora of threads here with women losing their hair, brittle nails, loss of menstrual cycle, etc

In general, I wouldn't overly concern myself with calories from lifting or eating those back because they're roughly equivalent to going for a walk. I didn't really worry about my lifting calories when I was losing my 40 Lbs, but I did eat back my other exercise calories because I got into endurance cycling and doing 1/2 centuries and whatnot. I also took the time to research what a reasonable energy expenditure would be for that activity and used a multitude of sources.

Part of the big problem people have is that they simply take whatever is in the database as gospel instead of questioning it and doing some research...and because they're out of shape, they're also overestimating the intensity of their workout How someone can actually think an hour of swimming laps burns 1,000 calories is beyond me...maybe if you're Michael Phelps