Gym routines don’t affect daily calorie count?

mikek1286

Why doesn’t your strength training routine affect your daily calories like cardio does? Or maybe it does and I’m doing something wrong but I see that when I add and exercise like say bench press nothing changes in my calories. Shouldn’t I need to eat more if you have a gym routine?

sijomial

The strength training part of the exercise diary is just an online notebook with no calorie functionality.

To get a decent estimate search in the cardiovascular part of the diary for "strength training" and enter the entire duration of your weights session - significant recovery time between sets is assumed and taken into account.

Lietchi

It's a common mistake 🙂 well, not even a mistake really, let's call it a quirk of MFP.

The strength training section is just for logging the sets and reps. For calories, you should log under Cardiovascular, choosing 'strength training (weight lifting, weight training)'.

Scotty2HotPie

Log your Gym Session under "Cardio" when you're done. There's an option for "Strength Training" under cardio. You'll have to estimate calories. I typically use 200 Calories per 60 mins.

You don't burn a ton of calories at the gym. However, I believe weight training is superior to cardio because for every pound of muscle you gain, you're going to be passively burning more calories on a daily basis... all the time.

Retroguy2000

I usually estimate 200 calories for 45-60 mins of legs or upper body (chest/back), and 150 for a shorter arms/shoulders workout. If that's a little conservative, that's OK.