Tracking heart rate for weight loss?

AnnPT77

anb3600 wrote: »

samhennings wrote: »

anb3600 wrote: »

So... how can I track calories burned during/after weightlifting? For example if I want to lose weight/tone up and start weightlifting, how will I know I’m having calories out over in?

If your calories out is greater than your calories in you will lose weight.

The only tech you need to know if thats happening is a pair of scales.

So I will only know if I’ve lost weight in the long term? How will I know how many calories IN on one day after I’ve done weightlifting? What happens if I don’t know how much I’ve burnt exercising that I then overeat and gain weight

Technically, yes, fat loss becomes obvious and certain only over the long term. (Day to day weight changes usually have more to do with water weight and digestive contents variation; the fat loss is slow, and you can see it beyond the "noise" from the irrelevant water/food factors in the weeks to months kind of frame).

But in a practical sense, it's not as difficult as that. You get a calorie estimate from MFP, log intake carefully, estimate exercise and eat those calories (or part of them if you're not confident they're accurate). For most people, weight loss will result. A few will need to adjust intake after 4-6 weeks, if things are not on the desired track.

Once you've been through a couple of months, tracking consistently and reasonably carefully, you'll be able to trust the process to know you're losing fat, whether it's shown up on the scale yet, or not.

As far as getting precision every day, don't worry about it. If you're set up to lose a pound a week, you're in a 500 calorie deficit daily, more or less. If you're over by 100 one day, and under 100 another (whether by unavoidable errors in food logging or exercise estimating or variation in non-exercise activity or by choice), it's no big deal. You might lose a little slower or faster than you expect, but if you try to be reasonably careful in estimating, and consistent in your average net intake over time, loss will tend to average out in reality.

Besides, your body doesn't have a switch that resets at midnight: You don't need to keep exercise and eating exactly in sync within 24 hours. Lots of people, for example, eat less during the week, so they can indulge more on the weekends, and they lose weight fine (at about the rate average daily calories would project). (They may see a scale jump on Monday from water weight and extra disgestive contents from the weekend indulgence, but it'll be gone in a day or two.)

I feel like weight loss is both harder and easier than you seem to be thinking: Easier, in that approximation and estimates work fine in practice, without need to obsess or overthing; Harder in that it does tend to be a gradual process that requires consistency and manageability over quite a long time period, in order to be successful.

But it's something you can do: Lots of us manage, and we're not all that special.

Best wishes!

autumnblade75

steveko89 wrote: »

autumnblade75 wrote: »

@steveko89 I think I agree that the TDEE method is probably preferable to people who primarily do strength training exercises. I don't know if there is greater accuracy in that approach for those who prefer easily estimated cardio exercises, such as running - especially if one considers a long run once weekly of 10 miles or so, which is likely to burn upwards of 1000 calories. For runs under an hour, TDEE might be workable.

I get what you're saying and I can't disagree there are some limitations to the methodology but if one's exercise and activity is fairly similar week-to-week having one day where there's a higher expenditure than others isn't particularly statistically significant in terms of changing the average, maybe 100-200 calories which could easily be compensated for by some iterative observations. I'd also consider it an anomaly for someone's weekly routine to be centered around a single 1000 calorie expenditure.

You might be right, but I can't find fault with either method. Both require a certain flexibility based on the observable weight trend results.

steveko89

autumnblade75 wrote: »

steveko89 wrote: »

autumnblade75 wrote: »

@steveko89 I think I agree that the TDEE method is probably preferable to people who primarily do strength training exercises. I don't know if there is greater accuracy in that approach for those who prefer easily estimated cardio exercises, such as running - especially if one considers a long run once weekly of 10 miles or so, which is likely to burn upwards of 1000 calories. For runs under an hour, TDEE might be workable.

I get what you're saying and I can't disagree there are some limitations to the methodology but if one's exercise and activity is fairly similar week-to-week having one day where there's a higher expenditure than others isn't particularly statistically significant in terms of changing the average, maybe 100-200 calories which could easily be compensated for by some iterative observations. I'd also consider it an anomaly for someone's weekly routine to be centered around a single 1000 calorie expenditure.

You might be right, but I can't find fault with either method. Both require a certain flexibility based on the observable weight trend results.

Some of my anti-measuring-exercise zealotry comes from the leftover frustration that I missed that iterative analysis piece and just tried to put my trust in difference devices, assuming they were accurate, which led to a lot of wheel-spinning.

Pertaining to OP's question regarding calorie variation for weight lifting:
Again, n=1, though specific to a regimen of weight lifting with little cardio (again, I can't guarantee that my calorie data is 100% precise but I'd be willing to put it up against just about anyone's) My weekly average TDEE calculated over the last 100 weeks varied with a standard deviation of 89.6 calories (3.63%). That's nearly two consecutive years of data for weeks in which I typically lifted 3-4 times per week but also includes those weeks where I took the whole week off for trips or holidays and a few experiments with 5-6 day splits. This also includes seasonal changes to activity (ex: playing golf and mowing the grass in the summer, etc.) with a weekly average body weight range of 171 to 181 lbs. This also encompasses periods and/or sessions lifting in both low and med/high rep schemes.

TL;DR - I find little change to observed calorie expenditure even when weightlifting frequency and intensity is varied.