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Golfer Rant
CUGolfer1994
Posts: 27 Member
I play golf frequently. When I play I walk and carry my clubs. MFP claims that I burn over 2,000 calories while doing it, and if I don’t eat an additional 2,000 to make up for it, it yells at me for being unhealthy. There’s no way I’m going to eat 6,000 calories in a day!!! Any golfers out there have an idea on how to log this?
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2000 calories? Seems high. How much do you weigh? Age? Height? How long does it take for you to play a round? Hilly terrain?0
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I agree that it’s high. I’m 6’2 and 337. Round of golf takes 4 hours to play. Mostly flat terrain but there are some hills. When I plug that into the exercise log under golf carrying clubs for four hours it comes out with 2,000+. Just looking for a more accurate number so I can log it0
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The Compendium of Physical Activities (CPA) assigns a value of 4.3 METs to "golf, walking, carrying clubs". Using this MET to calorie converter and using OPs weight and elapsed time, it shows an expenditure of 2761 calories. The Compendium claims that MET value is "supported by published literature", for whatever that's worth. I've seen the CPA quoted numerous times in threads about calorie expenditure, but I can't personally vouch for its accuracy.
Sounds high to me too, but then again I always doubt the calorie values given to me by my Garmin watch when I golf too. I played 18 holes in just under 3 hours today (using a cart) and it gave me 767 calories for it. I just aim to eat back maybe 50% of the calories.0 -
Your game would take that long, but you won't be walking all the time - perhaps try to work out how much time you actually spend walking with your clubs?0
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The Compendium of Physical Activities (CPA) assigns a value of 4.3 METs to "golf, walking, carrying clubs". Using this MET to calorie converter and using OPs weight and elapsed time, it shows an expenditure of 2761 calories. The Compendium claims that MET value is "supported by published literature", for whatever that's worth. I've seen the CPA quoted numerous times in threads about calorie expenditure, but I can't personally vouch for its accuracy.
Sounds high to me too, but then again I always doubt the calorie values given to me by my Garmin watch when I golf too. I played 18 holes in just under 3 hours today (using a cart) and it gave me 767 calories for it. I just aim to eat back maybe 50% of the calories.
Maybe it's calories (real calories) and not kcal
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The Compendium of Physical Activities (CPA) assigns a value of 4.3 METs to "golf, walking, carrying clubs". Using this MET to calorie converter and using OPs weight and elapsed time, it shows an expenditure of 2761 calories. The Compendium claims that MET value is "supported by published literature", for whatever that's worth. I've seen the CPA quoted numerous times in threads about calorie expenditure, but I can't personally vouch for its accuracy.
Sounds high to me too, but then again I always doubt the calorie values given to me by my Garmin watch when I golf too. I played 18 holes in just under 3 hours today (using a cart) and it gave me 767 calories for it. I just aim to eat back maybe 50% of the calories.
I don't think the MET value is accurate for this. Golfing isn't 100% walking while carrying clubs. That would be some weird hybrid of golf club backpacking. To be honest, I don't know how to estimate the actual sport, but I do think that expenditure is too high even after converting it into NET expenditure.0 -
livingleanlivingclean wrote: »Your game would take that long, but you won't be walking all the time - perhaps try to work out how much time you actually spend walking with your clubs?
But it's not like you're sitting down and doing nothing while you're not walking with your clubs either. It's actually not very often in a round of golf that you're standing/sitting still, relaxing and doing nothing. You're swinging the clubs, bending over/squatting up and down, raking bunkers, filling/replacing divots, fixing ball marks, etc. - and depending upon how good a golfer you are, maybe also digging golf balls out of trees/bushes and/or fishing them out of the water. 3 -
livingleanlivingclean wrote: »Your game would take that long, but you won't be walking all the time - perhaps try to work out how much time you actually spend walking with your clubs?
But it's not like you're sitting down and doing nothing while you're not walking with your clubs either. It's actually not very often in a round of golf that you're standing/sitting still, relaxing and doing nothing. You're swinging the clubs, bending over/squatting up and down, raking bunkers, filling/replacing divots, fixing ball marks, etc. - and depending upon how good a golfer you are, maybe also digging golf balls out of trees/bushes and/or fishing them out of the water.
Maybe logging it as "cleaning" would be more reasonable? Cleaning consists of continuous and intermittent movements of varying intensities. Housework has a MET value of 2-3.5, which sounds more reasonable than 4.3.0 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »livingleanlivingclean wrote: »Your game would take that long, but you won't be walking all the time - perhaps try to work out how much time you actually spend walking with your clubs?
But it's not like you're sitting down and doing nothing while you're not walking with your clubs either. It's actually not very often in a round of golf that you're standing/sitting still, relaxing and doing nothing. You're swinging the clubs, bending over/squatting up and down, raking bunkers, filling/replacing divots, fixing ball marks, etc. - and depending upon how good a golfer you are, maybe also digging golf balls out of trees/bushes and/or fishing them out of the water.
Maybe logging it as "cleaning" would be more reasonable? Cleaning consists of continuous and intermittent movements of varying intensities. Housework has a MET value of 2-3.5, which sounds more reasonable than 4.3.
I see where you're coming from, as many of the movements would (loosely) resemble cleaning. My only sticking point with that is that you don't normally walk 5-8 miles while doing house cleaning. 5-8 miles is about the average range one would expect to walk while playing a round of golf (if not using a motorized cart), with 15-25 pounds strapped to your back basically the entire time.
I dunno, I'm just spitballing here - I've read a lot of calorie burn numbers for golf from a lot of sources and they all seem high to me, but the vast majority of them are north of 1,500 calories for the average 4-hour (walking) round.0 -
Yeah, it's hard to estimate. Especially that, not unlike cleaning, there are many individual differences in how much "back" they put into the movement. I think the safest bet for OP would be to just eat back what they think is reasonable, compare their weight loss to expected rate, then adjust calories accordingly. That seems to be the standard advice that works for virtually any activity.1
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It sounds like you're hitting "complete diary" at the end of the day and getting a warning for consuming too few calories? If that's the case and you're sure you're in safe territory then don't click complete. Another option is to enter fewer hours of golf to compensate for the over-aggressive rate MFP gives you. Instead of logging 4 hours, log 2 (for example).1
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CUGolfer1994 wrote: »I play golf frequently. When I play I walk and carry my clubs. MFP claims that I burn over 2,000 calories while doing it, and if I don’t eat an additional 2,000 to make up for it, it yells at me for being unhealthy. There’s no way I’m going to eat 6,000 calories in a day!!! Any golfers out there have an idea on how to log this?
You eat 4000 to lose weight?2 -
TavistockToad wrote: »CUGolfer1994 wrote: »I play golf frequently. When I play I walk and carry my clubs. MFP claims that I burn over 2,000 calories while doing it, and if I don’t eat an additional 2,000 to make up for it, it yells at me for being unhealthy. There’s no way I’m going to eat 6,000 calories in a day!!! Any golfers out there have an idea on how to log this?
You eat 4000 to lose weight?
My goal is 2,630, but if I log a four hour round of golf i guess it becomes 5,000 instead of 6,000. Regardless, point is that doesn’t seem right
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CUGolfer1994 wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »CUGolfer1994 wrote: »I play golf frequently. When I play I walk and carry my clubs. MFP claims that I burn over 2,000 calories while doing it, and if I don’t eat an additional 2,000 to make up for it, it yells at me for being unhealthy. There’s no way I’m going to eat 6,000 calories in a day!!! Any golfers out there have an idea on how to log this?
You eat 4000 to lose weight?
My goal is 2,630, but if I log a four hour round of golf i guess it becomes 5,000 instead of 6,000. Regardless, point is that doesn’t seem right
So add half the cals.
How often do you play golf? If it's regularly then you'll soon see if you're underestimating using half, based on your weight loss.1 -
TavistockToad wrote: »CUGolfer1994 wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »CUGolfer1994 wrote: »I play golf frequently. When I play I walk and carry my clubs. MFP claims that I burn over 2,000 calories while doing it, and if I don’t eat an additional 2,000 to make up for it, it yells at me for being unhealthy. There’s no way I’m going to eat 6,000 calories in a day!!! Any golfers out there have an idea on how to log this?
You eat 4000 to lose weight?
My goal is 2,630, but if I log a four hour round of golf i guess it becomes 5,000 instead of 6,000. Regardless, point is that doesn’t seem right
So add half the cals.
How often do you play golf? If it's regularly then you'll soon see if you're underestimating using half, based on your weight loss.
I play about 3x per week
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CUGolfer1994 wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »CUGolfer1994 wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »CUGolfer1994 wrote: »I play golf frequently. When I play I walk and carry my clubs. MFP claims that I burn over 2,000 calories while doing it, and if I don’t eat an additional 2,000 to make up for it, it yells at me for being unhealthy. There’s no way I’m going to eat 6,000 calories in a day!!! Any golfers out there have an idea on how to log this?
You eat 4000 to lose weight?
My goal is 2,630, but if I log a four hour round of golf i guess it becomes 5,000 instead of 6,000. Regardless, point is that doesn’t seem right
So add half the cals.
How often do you play golf? If it's regularly then you'll soon see if you're underestimating using half, based on your weight loss.
I play about 3x per week
So you'll soon figure out if you're over or under counting.0 -
If you walk the entire course (and don't use a cart), that would be about 7k yards or about 4 miles, which according to my pedometer woild only burn about 350 cals walked at a moderate pace.
If you are carrying your bag and not using a rolling cart on the course, my hiking app esimates that walking 4 miles in 3 hrs (a tyipcal time for 28 holes) carrying a 20# pack (which is about what 14 clubs, balls etc might weigh) would burn about 1350 cals over rolling terrain of w/no more than s 5 degree slope.
So, my guess is that you are burning about 1250-1500 cals max during a typical 3 hr/18 hole round of golf. The numbers will go down dramatically if you are using a rolling or electric cart.
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