Calculating Calories Burned

kevintheriault1986
kevintheriault1986 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
If I set a weight loss goal in this app and enter my details, it says I need to eat under ___ calories a day in order to lose __ lbs a week. But that doesn’t take into account the calories you burn working/sleeping/existing, right?

Is there an online calculator anywhere that will tell me exactly what my calories in/out per day are? Or should I just do the research/estimations and enter it into MyFitnessPal as cardio exercise? I know you have to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound, so I’d like to be able to estimate how long that takes me.

Replies

  • remysquishykins
    remysquishykins Posts: 4 Member
    edited January 2020
    Enter your exercise into my fitness pal... and get a fitbit to track your steps. There are oodles of workouts to choose from in fitness pal.... but a heart rate tracker like fitbit sync automatically.
  • MonaLisainCT
    MonaLisainCT Posts: 41 Member
    I've been wondering about this myself. My brother (diabetic, disabled, and VERY sedentary, like 200 steps per day would be a busy day for him if I didn't "make" him exercise.)
    His recumbent bike gives a calorie-burn total that I plug into MFP, but I have no idea how much his strength-building exercise sessions use.
    It's not much, I know, but it never registers on his fitbit: 3 sets of 26 reps each of 3 exercises - squats (into a taller-than-standard chair), elastic band stretches (to target his lats/arms), and arm circles (26 each forwards and backwards, first out to the side, then in front of his body, then overhead like a speedbag, for his biceps, triceps, and shoulders).
    If anyone could give their best guesstimate, just so I can plug it into his totals for the day, I'd very much appreciate it.
  • Fujigala
    Fujigala Posts: 34 Member
    your calories burned are calculated using your heart reate. I use a fitbit that measures my heart rate throughout the day and tells me exactly how many calories I burned each day.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,252 Member
    edited January 2020
    Please note that the MFP sedentary level (defined as an activity factor of approximately 1.25x BMR) would already include basic self care activities such as going to the bathroom, cooking and eating food, moving around the house to the tune of UP TO about 35-45 minutes of non sitting/non lying down activity per day. It can be often thought as maxing out at about 3500 steps a day if all that activity were convertible and converted into steps.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,223 Member
    Fujigala wrote: »
    your calories burned are calculated using your heart reate. I use a fitbit that measures my heart rate throughout the day and tells me exactly how many calories I burned each day.

    Heart rate only loosely correlates with calorie burn, overall.

    Devices like Fitbits don't measure calorie burn, they measure other things (heart rate, arm movement, etc.), and use those measurements plus statistics to estimate calorie burn.

    They'll estimate pretty closely for most people, a bit off for some (high or low), and quite far off for a very, very few.

    They can be useful devices . . . but "exact" for all? No, sadly.
  • magnusthenerd
    magnusthenerd Posts: 1,207 Member
    MonaLisainCT wrote: »
    I've been wondering about this myself. My brother (diabetic, disabled, and VERY sedentary, like 200 steps per day would be a busy day for him if I didn't "make" him exercise.)
    His recumbent bike gives a calorie-burn total that I plug into MFP, but I have no idea how much his strength-building exercise sessions use.
    It's not much, I know, but it never registers on his fitbit: 3 sets of 26 reps each of 3 exercises - squats (into a taller-than-standard chair), elastic band stretches (to target his lats/arms), and arm circles (26 each forwards and backwards, first out to the side, then in front of his body, then overhead like a speedbag, for his biceps, triceps, and shoulders).
    If anyone could give their best guesstimate, just so I can plug it into his totals for the day, I'd very much appreciate it.

    It is borderline not worth trying to track calories from resistance training. I believe actual metabolic cart hook ups during a 400 lb squat (which sounds just crazy to have a breath mask on for) is all of around 1 calorie per squat - so like 5-10 calories burned followed by probably 2 minutes of doing diddly squat because no one does 400 pound squats without needing serious recovery. It doesn't add up to much even in high output individuals.

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