Woodworking as exercise?

AwesomeOpossum74

As a hobby, I do classic woodworking, e.g. chisels, mallets, hand saws and hand planes ... no electric tools involved. It feels like a workout, as my muscles ache after a day in the garage. Most of the work is in use of the tools, not so much in heavy lifting.

1. What kind of workout/exercise would this be?
2. What level of workout? e.g. it's not sedentary, because I'm moving and bending and periodically there's light cardio.
3. How might I log it in MyFitnessPal?

AnnPT77

If this is your job, or something you do very regularly as a hobby, you could increase your activity level in your profile (lightly active to active, for example), and compare your results to your weight loss goal, then adjust accordingly.

If it's more irregular, but a meaningful amount of extra activity, you'd probably want to log it as an exercise.

There is a "carpentry, general" exercise in the MFP cardiovascular exercise database. Hard to tell if that's the right intensity level for what you're doing.

If you understand how METS-based exercise estimating works, you could use the Compendium of Physical Activities to arrive at an estimate. There are multiple levels of carpentry there, both hobby-like and occupational, such as in https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/Activity-Categories/home-repair. (That site will also fill you in more, on other pages, about METS-based estimating).

If your activity is low intensity but long duration, you may want to be cautious about estimating gross exercise calories (total burned during exercise, including RMR/BMR) vs. net exercise calories (just the additional calories, not the RMR/BMR). If it's shorter duration, this many not be a big enough factor to be meaningful in the big picture.

Another option that could potentially help would be to use a good fitness tracker; these are not magical, they just estimate calories in a more personalized way, but they can be a helpful input for many people.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

AnnPT77 gives really good advice. I can add that I don't think a fitness tracker won't help much, it mostly counts steps and arm motions confuse it. You can do the experimental approach: Add ~200kcals per hour for work in the shop and see if you still control your weight.

I have a similar problem when I do yardwork. I'm tired and hungry after a few hours, but I have no idea how much I need to eat.

Most important seems to be that you eat within reason, not allowing yourself to binge just because you did a little work.

springlering62

Sorry to hijack, but this made me flash back to my childhood, when my dad made me haul and split firewood with an ax and a wedge. And I was a small skinny girl. Now that was wood “work”.

lorrpb

Endurance athletes (triathletes & marathoners)generally add 200-300 calories per hour after the first hour (when you’re burning glycogen). So you shouldn’t need to add any more than that for yard work or woodwork. A few hundred calories once or twice a week won’t negate your weight loss efforts if everything else is on point 🤗

sijomial

lorrpb wrote: »

Endurance athletes (triathletes & marathoners)generally add 200-300 calories per hour after the first hour (when you’re burning glycogen). So you shouldn’t need to add any more than that for yard work or woodwork. A few hundred calories once or twice a week won’t negate your weight loss efforts if everything else is on point 🤗

@lorrpb

That's not how exercise fuelling works - you don't burn glycogen and then fat. Both are used in varying ratios right from the first minute of exercise.

This endurance athlete adds what I burn not a tiny 200 or 300 per hour as that would be a huge under-estimate.

Do agree that woodwork is a small calorie burner though.