How to log exercise accurately

Nadoriel
Nadoriel Posts: 59 Member
So, I’ve searched about it lightly but I didn’t find anything that applies to me?? Or I couldn’t understand well.. I don’t know. Sorry for another “repeated” question!

So it’s been a while since I last MFP. I’m 1.64m weight around 66.5kg or something, my scale never gives me the same number twice in a row 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m a nurse but only work part time 2x week for 12h. Other days I try to walk and do some exercise. I also have an Apple Watch. So before I was told to put myself as inactive on MFP and then use the Fitbit to complete. I did the same now but from what I read I should put lightly active as I usually walk an average of 10k steps a day??

Also, how do you log youtube exercise videos?? I’m really enjoying barre workouts, so I’ve been doing them at home. I prefer the less cardio, more strength training variety, as I then walk around for my cardio anyways. And then I do some light yoga in the afternoon.

To be honest I haven’t logged the exercises at all yet because I’m afraid to overcompensate in terms of calories. It probably doesn’t burn that much, does it??

So yeah, just wondering if I should attempt to log it as exercise or leave it as it is (not counting that I’m doing exercise at all). My idea is to sort of lose or at the very least maintain my weight. I never really managed to lose more weight than this unless I basically starved myself so I’m not that bothered 😅

Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,905 Member
    No method of "counting" exercise calories is 100% accurate, but not counting any of them is for sure 100% wrong.

    heybales knows his stuff about devices, so definitely listen to him above.


    Really the bottom line is you are going to have to run your experiment, like we all do. Since exercise calories are a bit of a crapshoot, I used Myfitnesspal's numbers (with no device attached) for most of my weight loss. When I had a lot of weight to lose it was really easy to lose the weight so making a bunch of mistakes really didn't matter that much. Regardless, I logged everything and in time I was able to see my own trending weight as it related to my logging and exercise. I made adjustments based on my weight loss and how I was feeling.

    Now that I'm at Maintenance I just use a flat number of calories burned per hour of moderate exercise. I arrived at that number over time and logging.

    Set your calories realistically, log, adjust.
  • Nadoriel
    Nadoriel Posts: 59 Member
    heybales wrote: »
    First - forget using Apple Watch synced the same way Fitbit was.

    Apple does not send the correct expected info to MFP - leads to a mess in the math.
    You get no credit for any activity above sedentary - none.
    They are supposed to send Total Daily Burned calories (TDEE) along with time stamp.
    They send your sedentary rated burn they use as base calories. Anyway, leads to totally wrong math since they send workouts too.

    Which makes me wonder why you would still be logging workouts - Apple does send those over even though it does not correctly increase your calorie goal.

    You would need to go to MFP Apps and sync to Pacer instead (disconnect Apple), and then within Pacer sync to Apple Health. Now all the info will be correctly brought over.

    Not sure where you read 10K steps is Lightly Active - none of the charts ever shared have that many steps on that level.
    Lightly Active is about 3.5 to 6K steps, you are into Active level easy, top end of range.
    But if you do end up syncing with Pacer - you put sedentary because MFP corrects itself to what you are actually doing, not a mere 4 levels of choice.

    No those workouts probably don't burn much - but I can guarantee what they do NOT burn. Zero calories.
    Are you going to skip logging a meal you ate out because it might not be accurate, therefore 0 calories?

    If you are not using the Apple watch for this and using their list of workouts - on MFP it depends on what the videos are. Youtube videos or in person - really doesn't matter if you are doing a certain workout.
    Yoga is in the database, if doing light cut the calories in half.
    Is the barre more than stretching?

    So just like the food side of the equation (logging by weight since calories is per gram) - you log as best you can knowing you aren't hitting total accuracy (like food labels are allowed upwards 20% off actual).

    Then you watch the results over 4 weeks (your BMR literally changes through a month, so you gotta wait to see) and adjust from there.
    And no basically starving yourself is wrong method, and almost always backfires on people.
    You can do better than that extreme.

    Heybales!! Lovely to see you are still here!! Thank you! Yeah I ended up changing from android to Apple and then Apple Watch so I was confused 😅 also lost a lot of weight, got anxious about it and then gained it almost all back! Ahah so here I am again 😊 thanks!!

    And thank you cmriverside!! Sorry for the delay but MFP is not sending me notifications... as it should! 🙄

  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    Instead of this......
    "How to log exercise accurately?"

    Change to.....
    How to log exercise reasonably?

    For some reason there is a pervasive culture on here applying a far higher standard of accuracy to exercise compared to the estimated BMR, estimated activity multiplier, estimated food & drink intake.

    Because reasonable really is good enough for purpose, especially when coupled with consistency and the willingness to make adjustments based on long term trends.
    I'm fortunate that my main exercise can be estimated with an unusually high degree of accuracy but I lost weight using very rough (and as I subsequently discovered, inflated) calorie estimates using far less accurate methods.
  • Nadoriel
    Nadoriel Posts: 59 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    Instead of this......
    "How to log exercise accurately?"

    Change to.....
    How to log exercise reasonably?

    For some reason there is a pervasive culture on here applying a far higher standard of accuracy to exercise compared to the estimated BMR, estimated activity multiplier, estimated food & drink intake.

    Because reasonable really is good enough for purpose, especially when coupled with consistency and the willingness to make adjustments based on long term trends.
    I'm fortunate that my main exercise can be estimated with an unusually high degree of accuracy but I lost weight using very rough (and as I subsequently discovered, inflated) calorie estimates using far less accurate methods.

    In retrospect I guess you’re right 🤷🏻‍♀️ not knowing was the reason I asked in the first place. And the reason I get almost ocd with this is because it never really seems to work with me long term so I start doubting everything I do. Last time I tried calorie counting I pretty much stagnated just a tiny bit below my weight now, for months until I finally gave up counting. I guess if I had a good relationship with food/body enough to think long term I probably wouldn’t need to be here in the first place 😂😂😂

    @heybales I’ve connected my MFP with pacer which in turn I’ve connected to my health/watch app. Indeed I got calories from my steps. I usually do about 13k and got around 30 extra calories from it. Today I’ve done around 21k and got almost a full day extra of calories (1300). To be honest seems hard to believe??

    About the workouts, Pacer doesn’t seem to recognise or import the workouts I log on the Apple watch. At least it’s not appearing on my MFP diary. (Not that I need any more calories for today....)
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    probably an issue with starting mid-day, those workouts should come over.

    But MFP will correctly remove them before doing math for the adjustment, so the adjustment would go down, workouts are added - the end goal would be the same.