Entering the correct value for Exercise calories

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max12341234
max12341234 Posts: 3 Member
in Getting Started
The treadmill I use gives the total calories per workout. According to Alex Hutchinson, a runner and postdoctoral physicist, treadmills take your basal metabolic rate into account when calculating your calorie burn. I'm assuming that myfitnesspal wants only the net calories obtained from the additional exercise when entering the exercise calories. Is this correct? Can someone please verify?

For example, Lets say someone sits on their couch for 2 hours and burns 160 calories from just the basal metabolic rate. If the treadmill says I burned 300 calories in 2 hours it includes my basal metabolic rate in the calculation. Thus, I assume that I should subtract 160 from the number 300 - 160 = 140 and I should enter 140 as the calories burned from the exercise into myfitnesspal

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  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 889 Member
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    Ideally, yes you would use net calories burned. However, I find that most ways of estimating calorie burn do it all sorts of ways.

    Did the treadmill also take into account your age, weight and height? VO2max?

    When running -- when I was actively at a calorie deficit - I usually took the estimate that my running app gave me and the estimate my Polar HRM gave me and just picked a number between the two.

    But, by all means - if you have more accurate ways of calculating a calorie burn estimate, try to be as accurate as you can.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    max12341234 wrote: »
    The treadmill I use gives the total calories per workout. According to Alex Hutchinson, a runner and postdoctoral physicist, treadmills take your basal metabolic rate into account when calculating your calorie burn. I'm assuming that myfitnesspal wants only the net calories obtained from the additional exercise when entering the exercise calories. Is this correct? Can someone please verify?
    - Correct. Poor / lazy programming by MyFitnessPal means much of the exercise database is based on gross calorie METS estimates.
    max12341234 wrote: »
    For example, Lets say someone sits on their couch for 2 hours and burns 160 calories from just the basal metabolic rate. If the treadmill says I burned 300 calories in 2 hours it includes my basal metabolic rate in the calculation. Thus, I assume that I should subtract 160 from the number 300 - 160 = 140 and I should enter 140 as the calories burned from the exercise into myfitnesspal
    That's a very reasonable approach and reasonable is good enough for purpose. You would be burning higher than BMR during that time but perfection really isn't required.

    The main things for your treadmill estimates are your weight, your distance covered and whether you are walking or running.
    An alternative approach would be to use a calculator that gives you a net calorie option, like this - https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

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