Calories accuracy

utz2119

Are the calories burned accurate or do they aim high or low?? Or do u have a watch that tells u what u burned and what kind do u have??

cmriverside

I lost all my weight without any watches/devices. I used the calories myfitnesspal gave me in the beginning. Some people claim they are too high, I didn't find that to be true for me.

You'll have to pick - either eat all of them or maybe start with 50% of them - log food and exercise using some set method. Do that for 4-6 weeks, then adjust if you aren't seeing the results according to your chosen numbers. No device is 100%, they use generalities.

If I were you I'd start focusing on logging food, too. You said in another post that you haven't been doing that. Food is the much more important variable.

LiveOnceBeHappy

cmriverside wrote: »

I lost all my weight without any watches/devices. I used the calories myfitnesspal gave me in the beginning. Some people claim they are too high, I didn't find that to be true for me.

You'll have to pick - either eat all of them or maybe start with 50% of them - log food and exercise using some set method. Do that for 4-6 weeks, then adjust if you aren't seeing the results according to your chosen numbers. No device is 100%, they use generalities.

If I were you I'd start focusing on logging food, too. You said in another post that you haven't been doing that. Food is the much more important variable.

Agree: food is WAY more significant variable for weight loss. My home exercise bike gives me a ridiculous number of calories for a workout. If I “eat” any of my calories back, it’s very few.

Retroguy2000

I assume watches are better at tracking some activities than others.

Here's Athlean talking about how cardio machines can be lying to you. Likewise those, "Burn X calories in Y minutes!" routines all over YouTube etc. They all have incentive to inflate.

The question is also how many additional calories were burned, rather than how many were burned total. Based on my daily maintenance level, and a calculation of 1 MET, I'd burn about 100 each hour of the day just being sedentary. If some activity reports I burned 400 in an hour, that's a net burn of 300. I choose to manually enter my stationary bike (no watts counter) and weights calorie estimates as conservative estimates, then as per how MFP works I can eat those back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-RT3MvTY_8

spiriteagle99

For me, my treadmill grossly inflates the number of calories I burn. My stationary bike not as much. I use MFPs numbers for running and walking, the bike's numbers for riding since they are lower. My Garmin activity calories are close to MFP's at the end of the day. I generally burn a bit more calories than most people my age, so I can eat back 100% of the calories MFP gives me and still maintain my weight. Experiment for a few months and see what works for you.

AnnPT77

utz2119 wrote: »

Are the calories burned accurate or do they aim high or low?? Or do u have a watch that tells u what u burned and what kind do u have??

I agree with others: Run a personal experiment for 4-6 weeks, eating a given calorie level, logging the same percent of your exercise calories (and estimating those calories the same way), and see what happens to your body weight. If your sensible goal loss rate differs from your actual average weekly loss rate, adjust your calorie intake. (If you're adult, female, not in menopause, compare bodyweight at the same relative point in at least two or more different menstrual cycles as the basis for your averaging.)

Some exercise estimates will be low, some will be high. There are theoretically better methods for estimating some types of exercise, but there's not one method that's likely to be most accurate across all exercise types.

The MFP exercise database, IMO, is crazy high for some things, middling-OK for others, and possibly the best source for a few. (I won't belabor why, but will say that there's a theoretical flaw in how MFP calculates that makes long-duration low-intensity exercise most likely to be quite overestimated.. There are other issues as well, even though MFP's methods are research-based.)

My good brand/model fitness tracker, one that's pretty close with all-day calorie estimates for other people (based on reports here), is around 25%-30% low for me. That is, I need to eat substantially more calories than it estimates in order to achieve any specific weight-management goal. That's not a problem with the tracker, it's that I'm statistically unusual in ways that are rare, but possible. From comparing its exercise calorie estimates to good-quality power-metered machines (ergometers), it seems like at least some of its exercise estimates are not as far off as the all-day estimates.

Run your personal experiment. Learn your personal results. Follow what you learn from that.

It's fine to start with the MFP estimates, including exercise estimates, and eat back anything from 50-100% of those exercise calories (pick a percent and stick with it). Be sure your MFP "activity level" setting reflects your daily life before intentional exercise. Or, get a good fitness tracker, sync it to MFP, enable negative adjustments, and eat the number of calories that the device and MFP negotiate between them.

Either way, adjust based on the 4-6 week results.

tomcustombuilder

Err on the low end. These watches, apps, etc are only a guide to get started. After a month review what your weight is doing. If the results are what you were after then your calories burned and calories taken in are correct for your goals, if not, adjust accordingly.

westrich20940

The database - as with the food database -- can range from being accurate to very inaccurate.

My suggestion is to try to use multiple sources of data (best if the source of data takes into account your personal stats). So, if you are using a machine ... see if you can put in your weight/height/sex/age, etc....the calorie burn will be *more accurate than if you can't put that stuff in.

You can use a fitness watch or something as well - but make sure you understand it's just one source of data too.

I'd also then see if you can use the good old Google and find out (with your stats as much as you can) what you burnt doing......whatever it is that you did.


Example: I run. When I was actively using MFP to lose weight I logged my calorie burn from my runs --- my running app gave me an estimate of calorie burn, my Polar HRM gave me an estimate, and I would also Google an estimate ---- all allowing me to put in my current weight/age/sex, etc.....and I'd choose a median number from those 3 and use that.

It was close enough bc I lost as expected.

chris_in_cal

It is a good question. I think there a whole variety of ways to make progress, a lot of variations person by person.

If you want to get engaged with a fitness accessory, you should, it can be fun, and fun things can be really helpful in making progress. The watches and devices all do estimations. A better way to look at making this choice is to think about the "Ecosystem." Check in with two or three of your role models and if they are all on Garmin Connect, get a Garmin. If they all use Samsung Health, use that. Apple and Fitbit are other huge Ecosystems. Peer support and having fun, now that is two great things that contribute.

MFP is kind of a related Ecosystem. Logging calories into MFP? it can work spectacularly, but do you enjoy the process?

So get a Garmin Venu Sq, get a digital food scale, sync MFP and Garmin Connect, then track as much as you can your food intake in MFP and your activities in Garmin, then if you are engaged, have some friends involved, and having fun...that is three great things.

Guaranteed success!