Exercise Database seems to have calorie counts that are too high

gaverill123

I've noticed that some of the calorie counts on typical exercises seems to be too high on My Fitness Pal.
Am I just imagining that, or is it true?
How can we make the calorie counts more realistic?
Thanks.

dewd2

Yes, that is true for many. I think they use 'average' burns but 'average' doesn't fit many. I think most folks here start by eating half the calories burned and see how it lines up with your target gain or loss over a few weeks.

kshama2001

Which exercises specifically?

All the ones I use (Walking, Hiking, Swimming) feel right, except, alas, "Weight training, free weights" which I have replaced with "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)."

Well, I do use a sliding scale of time for "gardening" - if there is a shovel or grunting involved I take the full time, and work down from there depending on what I'm doing.

jjpptt2

Depends on the person, the exercise, and the intensity. Unfortunately there's no way "normalize" the numbers so you have to make some manual adjustments for yourself, or treat them as rough guidelines rather than exact measures.

sijomial

The generic problem is that they are gross calorie estimates (including what you would have burned in the time duration anyway) rather than net calorie estimates (the additional exercise from the exercise only).
You can attempt to correct that yourself. I might take 100 cals/hour off for example.

Some common sense does go a long way in using the database well - for example the bicycle speed related estimates are very high for me and my fast road bike but would be reasonable if I was doing the same speed on a dirt bike in mud on a hilly route. And using speed/distance estimates on a stationary bike would be a mistake as they don't actually move.

You are better off working out reasonable estimates for the few exercise you actually do rather than apply a blanket percentage "correction" (it isn't a correction it's a reduction!).
I'm fortunate that for my predominant cardio exercise (cycling) I can get very accurate estimates using power meters, for strength training it's not possible to measure so the rather modest strength training estimate in the database here is fine and probably close enough to my net cal expenditure not to bother trying to change it.

Do remember that just like your food logging absolute precision isn't needed for purpose, reasonable is good enough along with the common sense to make adjustments based on actual results over time.

amtyrell

Also remember to log only the time yoi ard actively doing the activity.
For example i did a brand new to me exercise of snowboarding yesterday. I would have had no idea how many calories to log without the database.
At mountain 5 hrs 15 min but only logged 3 hours
Spent some extra time doing things like renting snowboards, going to bathroom, going up lifts, one coffee/hot chocolate break. So only logged actual mountain snowboarding down time.
Also that 1700 calories feels reasonable given how sore and tired I feel. It was very very hard but very very fun

Machka9

I tend to use the low/light/slow options for my exercises AND I tend to round my times down.