Calories burned

Klmom123

How does someone get an accurate estimate of the calories burned during exercise ? I’ve noticed posts where an exercise is 100 more calories burned for the exact same time amount . I am just using MFP calculations and they must be low for the activity. How do I accurately log calories burned ? What do you use to estimate ?

TeaBea

Calories burned are estimates....always. What is the activity?

Activity trackers generally give a pretty good estimate with step based activity.

Heart rate monitors do pretty well with steady state cardio.

Use a power meter for cycling.

Strength training (not a big calorie burner, use the lowest on-line estimate) is very difficult to measure as there are many variables.

An activity tracker FitBit One works well enough for me.

Klmom123

Thank you for helping ! My exercise is mainly Walking & yoga . Yoga is very low on the calorie burning scale , but I know there are other benefits for me. But walking seems to have the largest range of calories burned for the same time. I googled it and like you said it is very subjective and difficult to measure.

NorthCascades

Calories burned walking ~= 1/3 your weight in pounds * miles walked.

Lots of hill will affect that a bit, speed only has a very small effect.

dougii

There are plenty of online calculators to give you estimates. Pick one and go with it, or use MFP's - being consistent in your calculation is always good! I use a heart rate strap and Garmin watch for running; I use MFP for lifting super sets. MFP is notoriously on the high side for calorie burn estimates. Some will argue this, but because I know the estimates are high I never eat back all of my exercise calories. Enjoy!

heybales

Klmom123 wrote: »

How does someone get an accurate estimate of the calories burned during exercise ? I’ve noticed posts where an exercise is 100 more calories burned for the exact same time amount . I am just using MFP calculations and they must be low for the activity. How do I accurately log calories burned ? What do you use to estimate ?

You see differences probably because of differences in weight - if time and intensity (pace/speed) are the same.

If you mean wall posts from friends.
They also could be entering their own calorie burn when they select the workout. Sometimes you'll see 1 cal when someone is using MFP in another way. Or don't know how to use it.

And then MFP uses the same database as others.

For instance, the link in the post above is talking about METS values of workouts - that's from the exact same database MFP pulled it's data and did same conversion to weight.
Of course that article in the link after discussing importance of weight proceeds to show calorie values with a set weight factor - very stupid.

Walking has been the exercise type (with running) most measured in lab studies - and formula's are very accurate for it. (cycling next).
Just depends on what the formula is giving - Gross calories burned during that chunk of time. Or Net calories on top of a base burn you would have had sleeping.
(of course if you took time away from doing an otherwise active thing and skipped it, like paid someone to mow the lawn for 1 hr so you could do a 1 hr walk, you may not have in NET burned anything more than you would have done anyway)

For MFP which is an add-on system (except when you sync a tracker) type - use NET.
Which sadly the database doesn't do automatically.
Hence the reason it appears inflated depending on what you did (low level burn) and for how long (longer makes difference worse).

lorrpb

Had your weight changed in between the times you log the activity? MFP prorates calories based on your current weight.

jhanleybrown

Based in what I've read .3 x body weight (lbs) x miles is most accurate. MFP is high. I used MFP for a while and ate back their estimate... that didn't work well.