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Active Kcalories or Total Kcalories

marshm101
marshm101 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi all, just looking for advice on logging exercise.

I have an Apple Watch so can see the Activity when doing my home workouts. But do I log the Active Kilocalories or the Total Kilocalories for that exercise session in the Exercise log on here MFP ??

Example - yesterday BodyCombat session Active - 323 kcal Total 416 kcal so there is a bit of a difference to offset calories eaten.

Thanks

Replies

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,993 Member
    You only log the active calories of your workout.
    The total calories includes your BMR calories (which you would have burned anyway, exercise or not) and those are already included in MFP calculation of your calorie goal - if you logged the total calories of your workout you'd be double counting your BMR calories.
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 921 Member
    Yeah, active calories I'd say.

    Not to highjack but ... I do not have a thing that measures active vs. total (I just use the estimate that I get from my running app or the avg. HR based on my HRM)....so I'm assuming that that would be Total cals, not Active cals?

    I didn't notice an issue when putting in the calories burned (although I did choose a number between my HRM and app bc they would differ by up to ~100 calories sometimes, particularly the more intense my run was). And also, while actively losing weight I will usually eat back between 50-75% of my exercise calories, 100% if I am hungry still.

    So...not sure how much error there is either way. As in I still lost the amount of weight I expected to lose using those estimates.

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