Should I eat back my exercise calories?

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  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
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    My step count seems to vary by speed. At 3.8 mph, it's pretty close to 2000 per mile. At 4.3 mph, it's more like 1850. I am using MMW to figure that out. It is pretty consistent about the speed to pace length (pace length obviously determines steps per mile). Pace length varies from person to person as well as by speed for the same individual. there is no universal formula.
  • fuzzylop72
    fuzzylop72 Posts: 651 Member
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    nxd10 wrote: »
    I don't know how you guys possible get that many steps in an hour walk. I have done this six years and I get 3500 steps in a brisk 3.5 mile route, which takes maybe 50 minutes. My husband - who is taller, but has shorter legs - gets 4700.

    It takes me a good day of hiking to get 20K steps OR a day working in a professional kitchen or warehouse where I am walking constantly.

    I get around 8500 steps in an hour. Currently i'm usually wearing both an apple watch and a fitbit charge 2 (on different wrists), and they tend to vary by less than 1k steps (although the calorie burn reported by each is very different, with the apple watch reporting low calorie consumption compared to the fitbit -- the apple watch is what I have synced to mfp).
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,728 Member
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    fuzzylop72 wrote: »
    nxd10 wrote: »
    I don't know how you guys possible get that many steps in an hour walk. I have done this six years and I get 3500 steps in a brisk 3.5 mile route, which takes maybe 50 minutes. My husband - who is taller, but has shorter legs - gets 4700.

    It takes me a good day of hiking to get 20K steps OR a day working in a professional kitchen or warehouse where I am walking constantly.

    I get around 8500 steps in an hour. Currently i'm usually wearing both an apple watch and a fitbit charge 2 (on different wrists), and they tend to vary by less than 1k steps (although the calorie burn reported by each is very different, with the apple watch reporting low calorie consumption compared to the fitbit -- the apple watch is what I have synced to mfp).

    10% variance is about what I see as well.
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
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    My cheap Asian fitness watch and MMW on my phone track pretty closely; probably under 5% variance on steps. calories estimate is another story; the difference can be pretty dramatic.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,070 Member
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    nxd10 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    stanmann571 wrote: »
    sgt1372 wrote: »
    jmath0303 wrote: »
    sgt1372 wrote: »
    How are you able to walk 20-25k steps/day?

    That would be a 9-10 mile and 4 hr hike for me, which I only do on rare occasions and would result in about a 1000 cal burn, all of which I would eat back to remain in maintenance.

    If you actually do this that's fine but it's not sedentary but very active and probably will require a significant adjustment in your TDEE or NEAT estimate.

    I usually wake up and do a 60 minute walk before work (office job, but still get a few thousand at work as well) and then another 60 minute walk after work.

    I don't think that adds up to 20k steps - 10k at best. I wouldn't count the steps at work.

    Accuracy in terms of steps is only important in terms of measuring the cals burned so that you know w/reasonable certainty how much food you should eat to remain in maintenance.

    If you are basing your cal burn on 20k steps but are only actually taking 10k steps, you will probably overeat, gain wt and not remain in maintenance.

    60 minutes at a brisk pace is 4-5 miles. at 2K steps per mile that's 8-10K, times 2 is 16-20k steps, plus incidental lifestyle easily gets to 20K.

    Just what I was thinking. Even though I'm 4-5" shorter than OP, and more than twice his age, an hour of exercised-focused walking over flat to lightly-rolling terrain with hard surfaces is good for around 4 miles.

    I don't know how you guys possible get that many steps in an hour walk. I have done this six years and I get 3500 steps in a brisk 3.5 mile route, which takes maybe 50 minutes. My husband - who is taller, but has shorter legs - gets 4700.

    It takes me a good day of hiking to get 20K steps OR a day working in a professional kitchen or warehouse where I am walking constantly.

    Just to be clear, since you chose my post to reply to: I can walk for miles at a time at around 4 miles an hour (varies, usually, between 3.9mph and 4.1mph as measured by my Garmin, depending on weather & energy level and such). This is exercise-type walking, getting out there and going for it, not walking at work. I've not said how many steps I get in a mile, because I don't have the slightest idea. I don't use any kind of step-counter device, just a GPS-based speed/distance one.

    A significant chunk of OP's walking (2 hours daily, IIRC) was concerted walking. Since I can cover about 8 miles in that much time, I was agreeing with Stan, who was quibbling with someone who said it would take 4 hours to walk 9-10 miles when "hiking". In rough terrain, I could see that. On level, paved ground, that would be a really slow walk, if walking just to walk.

    Walking at work is a whole other deal: One may be moving constantly, but typically not accelerating to max speed and staying there. I'm not dissing active jobs - I've had some - but it's different walking. OP's walking at work, even though it's deliberate, is probably more similar to the latter category.
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
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    I walked 6.6 miles in 91 minutes today. My watch says that's about 12000 steps or about 132 steps a minute. Extrapolate that out and it would take me about 2.5 hours to walk 20,000 steps and it would be almost exactly 11 miles. So 2 hours + incidental walking seems about right.

    Look how many fantasy calories Strava gave me for that, something I was referring to before about not knowing how many calories to add for an activity,

    eeb5cloxblb2.jpg
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
    edited May 2018
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  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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    Well I have had a pedometer, two fitbits, and an Apple Watch and they all give me the same numbers. I do take long strides. And I have calibrated them. Drives me crazy walking with my husband, who can get twice the steps on the same walk. Whatever it is, it gives an accurate calorie count because if I eat it back I don’t gain.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,604 Member
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    Young Chinese students 21.7 +/-2.
    Females Height 166.2+/-5.4cm weight 59.6+/-8.3kg BMI 21.5+/-2.5 and
    Males Height 175.7 +/-5cm weight 69.1+/- 8.4 BMI 22.4 +/-2.4

    STEPS per minute range 95.71 to 131.00 with speed ranging from 3.8km/hour to 6.4km/hour
    http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/3/1/e001801.full.pdf

    Hence my saying that moderate activity walking *i.e. MET 3.0 to 6.0, which will be somewhere between 2.8mph and 4mph* will yield at least 100 steps a minute.
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
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    I averaged 4.3 mph on the walk yesterday (data about 4 posts up) and roughly 130 steps per minute.

    BTW, of the 1084 calories Strava wanted to give me, I left 443 on the table, so I accepted 641 or a little under 100 per mile. I still thought it was too much and then this morning I got the lowest weight I have seen so far (only by fractions of a pound). Yeah, I know it could just be "jitter" but I was expecting it to be about 2.5 pounds higher than it was. Wednesday I under reported some very strenuous SUP paddling (trying to keep up with 14' hard racing boards on a 9'6" inflatable board for over 4 miles) and that probably averaged out.

    I broke my long string of days of being within a pound of 160 by weighing in at 157.8, but I have been within 2 pounds of 159 for even longer, probably 5 weeks or so.

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