low calorie allowance for touring bike "cycling"

swagosweetheart

I'm a touring cyclist and am perplexed as to why I receive so few calories for cycling my touring bike. When I'm fully loaded, my bike and gear weigh between 50 and 100 lbs depending on how many days I will be without ability to replenish my perishables and water.
I no longer log my touring as such, and realize that even on my daily rides (on my touring bike) I probably burn more calories than allowed because my bike is heavy and because I cycle on rail trails with greater rolling resistance than cyclists on the road. Of course, I have burn less due to ascent work also.
Next week, I'll begin cycling a route through the bush in Australia and know that I'll be burning more than 248 calories/hour. What's the theory behind allowing so few calories to touring cyclists, anyone know?

TheBigYin

how are you calculating your energy expenditure... you're not just going off the "guesses" that MFP provides for cycling exercises are you? because, they're notoriously rubbish.

Get a HR monitor, and a Garmin, record the rides, use the Calorie Calculation the Garmin gives. Okay, so you're "off grid" in the bush - there's plenty of sunlight, so presumably you've a solar charge panel to keep them topped up, along with the phone...

that's going to be so much closer than any guesses that MFP comes up with - because MFP doesn't know how heavy your bike is, how windy the ride was, what tyres you're rolling on, and what surface you're rolling them on. That's 4 variables that can all double (or more) the wattage needed to move at a given speed. Hence, I keep referring to MPF figures as guesses.

swagosweetheart

I quit using the "touring" bike mfp calculation and started using the "bicycling" with specific mph calculation after checking it online with a couple other sources. I have used Mapmyride, but i'm in a no cell tower area, so I don't have a functioning smart phone and hate carrying my ipad through the woods each day. (I cycle on a rail trail and it's a rough surface, which I think is hard on my 5-year old ipad). I am managing to guess at my calories, roughly, but just wonder why the people who are hauling all that weight, and are often on low rolling resistence surfaces are getting such low calorie allowances for their effort.

SteveTries

I was really interested in your question/observation here, because for years people have complained that the MFP exercise calorie estimates are too high. I wonder if the algorithm has changed.

I personally don't use MFP's calculations, instead taking an estimate from my Garmin which knows my height, weight, age and crucially, my heart rate during the exercise.

This last point makes for a much more accurate estimation, which of course, is all any of these "calculations" are - estimates based on known baselines to which your individual information is applied

Forgive me if I am explaining things you already know.

I can't find any information about the algorithm MFP uses to estimate caloric burn. The fitness industry has for decades elected to over-estimate such things, presumably to give the user of that particular exercise bike or treadmill a greater sense of satisfaction. In more recent times, as we've become more health conscious, we've been demanding more accuracy.

To your specific problem here, as someone else suggested, an activity tracker that is truly measuring your effort is going to get a lot closer than a less informed calculation from MFP.

sijomial

swagosweetheart wrote: »

I quit using the "touring" bike mfp calculation and started using the "bicycling" with specific mph calculation after checking it online with a couple other sources. I have used Mapmyride, but i'm in a no cell tower area, so I don't have a functioning smart phone and hate carrying my ipad through the woods each day. (I cycle on a rail trail and it's a rough surface, which I think is hard on my 5-year old ipad). I am managing to guess at my calories, roughly, but just wonder why the people who are hauling all that weight, and are often on low rolling resistence surfaces are getting such low calorie allowances for their effort.

Personally I wouldn't use MyFitnessPal at all apart from using it as a heading and then overwrite my own estimates - to answer your bolded question their estimates takes no account of the weight of bike, type of bike, type of tyres, type of terrain, amount of climbing etc..

For a road bike at least the speed related estimates are very, very high - for my road hybrid they are still very high. By pure good fortune for your type of riding they "may" be closer.

If you know your miles travelled the personally I would have a go at calibrating / estimating a reasonable estimate per mile travelled or per hour of riding - could you borrow a Garmin or a smart phone for Strava (wouldn't use MapMyRide as their estimates always seem ludicrous)?

My Garmin comes up with pretty reasonable estimates but tends to under estimate on low intensity rides when my HR is low. I seem to produce good power at low HR but sadly not good power at high HR!
Strava is also pretty reasonable but that's probably a bit of luck as their estimates I suspect are gross rather than net calories which sort of compensates for my awful aerodynamics.