How to figure out calories burned for exercise for your body size/weight?

Rannoch3908

How to figure out calories burned for exercise for your body size/weight?

Can a fitness tracker do that (per workout - not all day)?

Does MFP take into account your weight and height when you type a exercise in and the length?
But even if it does it doesn't know heart rate so it can't be accurate right?

Any fitness trackers around $30 or less that people own that might work for this?

DancingMoosie

I just use the database or another online calculator to double check the #s. HR isn't always an accurate way to count calories burned. MFP does use your weight, if it is correctly logged daily.

L1zardQueen

You can also get an idea on how fast you are losing or not losing or somewhere in between in your food diary. Put in a number for calories burned from your particular workout and then track your calories in/ out over a couple of weeks. If you are losing as expected then you have the right number.

AnnPT77

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

How to figure out calories burned for exercise for your body size/weight?

Can a fitness tracker do that (per workout - not all day)?

Generically, yes. Or a heart rate monitor (HRM), potentially, depending on exercise. (Oversimplifying, HRMs have fewer functions than trackers. Different brands/models of either will have different pros/cons.) In general, if that's what you want, you'd use the device to get the estimate, then manually put it into MFP, if you don't want the all-day synchronization.

Does MFP take into account your weight and height when you type a exercise in and the length?

Yes. It generally uses something called "METS" to estimate. The concept, at a high level and speaking very loosely, is this: Reseachers study people doing a type of exercise. They figure out a typical range of calories that people of various sizes burn doing that exercise. That's used in conjunction with an estimated BMR (basal metabolic rate, estimated number of calories we'd burn if in a coma) to estimate calorie expenditure for the exercise. METS are a multiplier for BMR to get an exercise calorie estimate.

MFP scales its exercise estimates based on your current size (as you've recorded it in the app), the duration, and the METS value for that exercise.

This is more reasonable for some types of exercise than others. MFP's implementation, as I understand it, sort of double counts BMR (the exercise estimate is gross burn when you'd really want net of BMR), so the estimates are a little high even in theory. That's usually not a big deal arithmetically (for weight loss success) except for very long, slow exercise sessions that don't have a high per-minute calorie burn (like long-duration slow walking, for example).

There are other limitations of METS-based estimating, which matter more in some scenarios, less in others.

But even if it does it doesn't know heart rate so it can't be accurate right?

Heart rate doesn't *measure* calorie burn. HR correlates pretty well with calorie burn for steady-state cardiovascular exercise in a certain range of intensity (because CV exercise increases oxygen demand, and HR correlates with oxygen demand for those activities).

Some activities raise HR for reasons unrelated to calorie burn magnitude (like the internal body pressure typical of strength training). Some CV workouts (like intervals, especially high intensity intervals) don't effectively correlate because HR lags oxygen demand, and fitness level affects how fast HR returns to baseline, among other factors). HR is affected by ambient air temperature, emotion, hydration, and other factors, which can affect estimation accuracy.
Many people have maximum heart rates that differ significantly from age-based estimates, and HRM will mis-interpret intensity for them (unless they have a tested HRmax, and the device lets them enter it, or equivalent), which affects that calorie estimate. That's just a few examples of issues with HR.

HR and trackers monitors aren't gospel. They work better for estimating calories in some scenarios and some people than in others. Other methods work better than HR for some activities. Some modern trackers (ones where you can tell them what activity you're doing, or that have accurate activity auto-detection (🙄)) may automatically use methods of estimation other than or in addition to HR (such as distance/speed, for example) to improve their calorie estimates.

Any fitness trackers around $30 or less that people own that might work for this?

Not a range I've investigated. I wanted/needed a tracker with kind of specialized capabilities, which put me in a different range.

alexmose2

So, the quick answer is, you will never know the exact amount. We know what exercises burn more or less calories. Trackers can help estimate, but even they can be off by a lot. Keep track of weight/measurements/calories intaking and then you can estimate over time in accordance to your weight trends.

callsitlikeiseeit

I wear a fitbit. i currently have the inspire HR but I've had different ones over the years. it is pretty accurate for ME (it is not for everyone) Even then, I do not eat back all my calories burned. often, none at all or very few. but i have my calories set at 1500 so I have plenty of room and am rarely hungry. I do enter my exercise in mfp manually, but then change the amount burned to 1 so it doesn't 'double count' (I have my fitbit and mfp synched)

I have tried other cheaper trackers. I did not like them. its been a few years though so they may be better now, I dont know.

alung2k3

Generally you will get a ball park figure from MFP. I've seen it posted around quite a bit that whatever your estimated burn is, half it and log that. Has worked for me over the years (5st loss).

Eg. 500 cals estimated burn, log 250 cals and eat those 250 cals back.

spiriteagle99

It also can depend on the exercise. Walking and running have basic formulas that work that take weight into consideration: (weight x distance x .37) for walking or .6 for running. When riding a bike, weight isn't as much of a factor so you use intensity to figure out calories burned, which is very subjective.

FWIW, my Garmin and MFP numbers when I log my exercise manually are pretty similar in terms of exercise calories. The Garmin number is higher, but it takes into account the hills I deal with where I live, which mfp doesn't. I eat all my exercise calories.

nytrifisoul

Not $30, but i use a Polar HR which accounts for height,weight, type of exercise, and obviously your average heart rate during exercise. Ive had it for a few years and its been pretty accurate as far as calories burned since i always lost weight, and never gained while counting and i mostly ate all the calories i burned , maybe 100 or so calories less just to be safe.

sijomial

spiriteagle99 wrote: »

It also can depend on the exercise. Walking and running have basic formulas that work that take weight into consideration: (weight x distance x .37) for walking or .6 for running. When riding a bike, weight isn't as much of a factor so you use intensity to figure out calories burned, which is very subjective.

FWIW, my Garmin and MFP numbers when I log my exercise manually are pretty similar in terms of exercise calories. The Garmin number is higher, but it takes into account the hills I deal with where I live, which mfp doesn't. I eat all my exercise calories.

When riding a bike ideally you use power measurement which isn't at all subjective.
Agree that using intensity is very subjective and more related to fitness level than actual calorie burns.

OP - I would suggest starting from the types of exercise you do and then select an appropriate tool (which may or may not be a wearable gadget). If you are both heavy and unfit I doubt that heart rate would be a good metric for you.

PAV8888

For a good six years I logged my food religiously and weighed myself "daily-ish" and correlated my expected vs actual results... and I did not have a discrepancy of more than 4% of tdee between expected and actual results when evaluating my all day Fitbit caloric consumption against logged intake and against my longer term weight trend changes over a period of more than 6 weeks.

For the past 6 months I have been logging my intake more loosely. My discrepancy is now at 8.5% of tdee using weight trend and almost 10% using scale weight. I don't think that my Fitbit became less accurate!

For individual activities, other than cycling evaluated by a power meter, the compendium of physical activities is probably the closest you will come to a genetically "accurate" estimates. As Ann mentioned, you would have to exclude BMR (actually when it comes to mfp BMR * 1.25 or 1.4, 1.6, or 1.8, depending on the base activity level you've selected) for the time period in question in order to estimate net additional calories burned

Many trackers try to deduce from your accelerometer data what activity you're engaged in, in order to utilize the compendium formulas.

However exercise still remains, for most of us, only a small part of our daily burn,with BMR and non exercise activity using up the bulk of our calories.

Accurate intake logging and monitoring your weight trend and adjusting based on your results is, imho, a higher percentage play than attempting an exact estimate of your individual exercise. Tbh most people don't get their base activity right, and that's a bigger discrepancy often resulting in attempts to create larger than desirable deficits.

kshama2001

I'd just keep it simple (and free!) and use MFP.

As some complain that the burns are inflated, you could start with eating back 50% of the calories you earn. If, after a month, you have lost more than expected, move it up to the % your results indicated.

I used to have the FitBit One, which cost well over $30, and did not measure HR. When I lost it, I didn't bother to replace it, and went back to the "dumb" $22 pedometer I got from my doctor. I also bought one of these for my mother.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ZWIJR2/

We need these on our walks as she often stops to look at things or talk to neighbors, so it's not straight walking. I know I have a 20 minute mile, so that's what I use in MFP. For example, if our walk took an hour but we only did two miles, I'll take 40 minutes of walking at 3 MPH, rather than the whole hour. I'll do something similar when hiking only then split the time between walking and hiking, depending on the time it took to move X distance.

Rannoch3908

Can you turn off the EAT CALORIES BACK part in MFP somewhere (Free version)?

I just got a heart rate monitor that attaches to chest for my workout program (DDP YOGA APP).

Might try to use in on my walks, bike rides, cardio videos, etc too.

AnnPT77

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

Can you turn off the EAT CALORIES BACK part in MFP somewhere (Free version)?

I just got a heart rate monitor that attaches to chest for my workout program (DDP YOGA APP).

Might try to use in on my walks, bike rides, cardio videos, etc too.

I don't think you can do that in free MFP, not sure. Can in premium.

Don't do it, especially if your weight loss rate is reasonable. What matters is your actual average weight loss rate, once you've been at this long enough (4-6 weeks minimum, typically) to have a somewhat reliable average. Losing too slowly is frustrating. Losing too fast creates higher health risks. Faster isn't always better.

That would be my advice: With changes in routine, or changes in data source (like the heart rate monitor), watch your weight loss rate over a period of weeks, and adjust intake as necessary to keep loss rate sensible.

DancingMoosie

You can't turn it off, but you can manually change the number of calories burned when you enter your exercise. If you want it off, there would be no reason to log the exercise or use a linked HR monitor...unless I'm missing something. But it seems odd to me to not calculate any calories burned through exercise because, as the calculation may be incorrect, having 0 calories burned would be even more wrong🤷‍♀️