exercise/calorie burn question???

jessifireball

Do you guys think that mfp calorie burn estimate is correct for exercise or do you like a watch that shows calories? I just have been working out and not tracking workouts. If you use a watch to monitor that which ones do you love? thank you!!!

NorthCascades

Some of the exercises in here have a reputation for being generous. I don't know personally, I use a power meter on my bike which is my main thing in the summer.

sijomial

For most of my exercise (road cycling) the speed related estimates in the database are very exaggerated. Doesn't matter though as there's good alternatives (Garmin and/or Strava) that give me perfectly usable estimates which are probably a bit under-stated but near enough to be reasonable and usable for purpose.

For strength training the estimate is probably a bit low for me.

For circuit training I feel it's too generous and so I adjust down to try to adjust for the difference between gross and net calories by taking off 100cals/hour.

For stationary cycling there's zero sense in using the MFP estimate as my bike trainer gives me a very accurate calorie burn.

Hopefully the above variances make people think about the sense of applying a random advice of "eat back 50% of exercise calories" - it depends on the individual selection from hundreds of entries. If I ate back 50% of my roughly 180,000 annual cycling calorie burn I would be severely undernourished!

Please note that although a watch can "show calories" they cannot count calories merely estimate. If that estimate is based on HR it might be reasonable for some, under for others, exaggerated for some or just a totally inappropriate exercise to try and use HR as a guide.

What exercise do you actually do OP?

heybales

The exercise database is actually based on studies and is decently accurate on many items.

The kicker is knowing if you are doing it the same intensity as that study and database entry.

Some have good intensity levels (walking, running) to know which one you are doing, some have none (elliptical) and so unknown if doing the same level as the study.

Some have accuracy problems by people logging it (Spin class was 60 min, but there was 5 min warmup and 5 min cooldown and 5 min of stretching - did you log 45 or 60 min), let alone did you do the intensity expected.

The other major kicker is MFP is an add-on system, not replace.
So it already is accounting for you to burn so many calories each day, and each min. Your BMR x 1.25 for Sedentary, x 1.4 Lightly-Active, x 1.6, x 1.75.

But exercise is added on to that already accounted for burn - but it should only be what was above and beyond it.

So if you do a low calorie burn workout for a long time (slow walk), the truly extra could be only 50% of reported.
Short and intense and big burn less of an issue.

That's where an external tracker solves the issue since they are a replace-only system - since it's reporting to MFP total daily calories burned - the math is simple and MFP corrects itself.
Workouts manually added to the tracker side (if it's not already getting them anyway) or MFP side (which sync over to tracker) are handled correctly and should be the total burned in chunk of time.

I use the database entry for Weights since there is no better estimate.
I use running & swimming calculator for my exact distance & time (pace) to replace on external exercise tracker (Garmin).
And power meter for bike which again replaces tracker.

BrianSharpe

NorthCascades wrote: »

Some of the exercises in here have a reputation for being generous. I don't know personally, I use a power meter on my bike which is my main thing in the summer.

Getting a power meter a couple of years ago was a humbling experience. I use a Garmin Forerunner and it's always been quite accurate for running when I compare it to the .63 x weight x distance formula but for cycling my power meter showed that it was significantly over estimating calories while cycling.

The usefulness of any device depends largely on what you're doing. Most of them are useless for anything other than steady state cardio and keep in mind that a heart rate monitor only measures 2 things...time and heart rate and there's not a linear correlation between heart rate and calories expended.

MFP generally is on the high side. It almost always comes down to trial and error, if you're accurately tracking your food and logging your exercise but not losing weight you know that the estimates are off, the simplest solution is often just to eat back a portion of you exercise calories and adjust as needed.

westrich20940

In my experience, many of the exercise estimates are not right. I think some of them might be, but I've felt at times that they were too high or too low. I use a Polar HRM and go by what it says I burned or use an online calculator to calculate using the average heart rate my Polar tells me.

I lost most of my weight a few years ago and when I was using the MFP estimates I didn't see much success...but when I got my Polar and used that estimate I did lose weight so I've been convinced that it's more accurate.

spiriteagle99

I mostly log walking and running, and the mfp estimates are pretty good there. If anything, they understate because I have a lot of hills where I live. I use their numbers. My stationary bike and mfp give about the same numbers, so I use the lower of the two. For other exercise, it really depends on the intensity, which MFP can't know, so I usually lowball the number.

jjpptt2

Honestly, there is so much variability and context that impact "accuracy" that it becomes really hard to know for sure. IME, both my Garmin 935 and MFP tend to be pretty close on most standard cardio activities (biking, running). I don't track strength workouts.

Ultimately, pick one that you like the best (either because you believe it to be more accurate or because you like the simplicity of logging/tracking that way) and use that method consistently. Over time you can compare your expected progress to your actual progress and make small tweaks in how you track/log if the expected and actual are not reasonably close.

Commander_Keen

NO.. I don't trust the numbers. I would go buy a heart rate monitor - Use those numbers

WholeFoods4Lyfe

The couple of times that I have done a side by side comparison, MFP way overestimated my calories burned. I just use my FitBit now. I don't usually eat back my exercise calories anyway, so at the end of the day, it probably doesn't matter too much, but I do like to track my deficit because I'm a numbers geek.

jjpptt2

Commander_Keen wrote: »

NO.. I don't trust the numbers. I would go buy a heart rate monitor - Use those numbers

What makes you NOT trust MFP, but DO trust an HRM?