Average calories in a day

jaecamp1

I usually average somewhere around 300. Definitely not as hardcore as some of you .

I do think a lot of people grossly overestimate. One person that used to be on my friends list would log things like "burned 4,815 calories shopping at Walmart for 90 min" ate around 4,000 calories a day and still showed a deficit of 4 thousand plus calories. Every single day. They quit because after a few months they were still gaining weight. Um, no, wrong. Just so wrong.

Amwhite1986

I walk every second day and burn 500 - 700 usually, speed walking 5-7 miles. I'm currently adjusting my route as I complete it faster, with less burn as I'm losing weight. For a 500 calorie burn it's usually 1.5 hours now.

MFP databases overestimates mine, on average, as being 200 calories more. I use Cardio Trainer.

kwedman488

On an average weekday, I burn between 1300-1600 cals in exercise a day. This is because a lot of my college classes are fitness classes, plus I'm doing the P90X/Insanity hybrid. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have swimming for an hour followed by step aerobics for an hour, followed by lecture and I normally do my P90X workout at the gym after that. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have soccer for an hour followed by jazz II dance class, and I usually go home and do my insanity at home after that. Fridays are easier since the only fitness class I have is west coast swing dance class for 2 hours and of course leg day for P90X. However I live a mile from campus, so I bike to and from my classes roughly twice per day due to the spacing of some of my lectures late afternoon, so I end up biking about 4.5 miles each day up and down hills (I burn about 80-100 calories each way depending on how far away my last class is, etc). The weekends are much less, normally around 500-600 cals burned per day from my workouts since otherwise I'm studying or cleaning the house.

CyberEd312

I average between 1000-1200 calories burned and that is normally 60-75 minutes of cardio.....

roxylola

Wow lots of hard core cardio folk here then. I do a bit of actual cardio at the gym, and I do build in 30 day shred for my non gym days as well as being out with the dogs for about an hour a day. I don't log anything for my weight training as I don't know what to call it and in terms of actually logging "exercise" if I don't sweat or at least get out of breath a little I don't log it, so a stroll of a mile or so in to town as I often do on my lunch I would not count.

reankanesmom

It honestly depends on what I am doing. If I bike for 30 minutes its only 200 or so calories if I run my 3-4 miles its anywhere from 500-600 add in a little bit of kettlebells and I am closer to 700 a day. I break up my workouts though morning and night and everyday is not the same. I do like to burn no less than 200 a day though.

sufferlandrian

OK, there is a lot that can make a difference in the number of calories burned. The fitness tools you use make a huge difference. Power is the only true way to tell how may calories you've burned. Everything else is a guess based off data that you enter into a program. For example. If you have a power meter on your bike, you enter your weight, height and age and what ever other data the program asks for. Then you can tell exactly how many watts it took to get from point A to point B. If you don't have a power meter, you can use heart rate. You put in the same data, age, weight and height and it will approximate the Calories burned but if you are more fit it will underestimate and if you are less fit it will over estimate simply because your heart beats faster when you are less fit. If you don't have a heart monitor, it's a complete WAG. Most programs are pretty generous when something like heart rate or power aren't used. Certainly weight plays a major role, but the program you are using to calculate Calories also can make a huge difference. I usually burn between 300 and 600 depending on how long I ride and whether I'm using my indoor bike or I'm on the road.

sufferlandrian

You should log the walks and the weights. You'd be surprised how much that will add up to in a week. :-)

shazzahare123

I was only going by logging on this site for calories burn't. When I swim I do one full hour without stopping, I realise now to change it to slower swim. But if it is so wrong why is it still on the site? As a newcomer I assumed all on this site would work well. I assumed what I was logging was correct as per Myfitnesspal.

I am morbidly obese and have lost nearly two stone. I am not a stupid woman by any means and always assumed that the more physical exercise I do and the less food I eat then the result would be weight loss. I swim daily and have joined the gym and have an exercise bike. I love all the exercise I am doing but got stressed when weight stalled. Now I am being told I am not eating enough and the calories I am burning are incorrect.

You can see from my point of view this is all a little confusing.

roxylola

Since people can and do starve to death I am reasonably confident that eating too little will never ever be a reason why any person can't lose weight. In the long run it might make it harder to maintain the new weight (possibly, maybe depending on how little and what you read)

I think if you can swim for a whole hour non stop then there is no way you would be going hard enough to burn that sort of calories. Just on the basis that if the (way out of date and now overestimated as we are more sedentary) average recommended calories for a woman is 2000 then to burn off 75% of that in one hour would require pretty serious effort.

I know it can be confusing and frustrating but it boils down to don't believe everything you see on the internet. I know people who have crashed their cars or got vastly lost in the middle of nowhere on dirt tracks because they followed their sat nav rather than either following the signs or using some common sense.

If you are not losing weight I would be looking at varying your exercise more and consider cutting your calories a bit more - just my opinion.

And for logging weights, I would but I have no idea what sort of burn that would be so I don't - that way I can't overestimate. I do allow some leniency in terms of my intake though. I don't get very hung up on the numbers

CarmenSRT

I was only going by logging on this site for calories burn't. When I swim I do one full hour without stopping, I realise now to change it to slower swim. But if it is so wrong why is it still on the site? As a newcomer I assumed all on this site would work well. I assumed what I was logging was correct as per Myfitnesspal.

I am morbidly obese and have lost nearly two stone. I am not a stupid woman by any means and always assumed that the more physical exercise I do and the less food I eat then the result would be weight loss. I swim daily and have joined the gym and have an exercise bike. I love all the exercise I am doing but got stressed when weight stalled. Now I am being told I am not eating enough and the calories I am burning are incorrect.

You can see from my point of view this is all a little confusing.

OP, the food part of the equation is arguably the biggest part of weight loss. Looking through your diary I saw a number of "homemade X" entries. First bit of advice I'd give you is get an ACCURATE food scale. Weight is far more difficult to mess up.than guessing or using volume measurements. Do not guesstimate. Little mistakes can be bigger than you think, and they add up. If a food comes in individual servings then it's relatively safe to use the packaging calories.

Being morbidly obese makes weight loss pretty darn easy at first. My all time high was 284 pounds (20 stones 4 pounds) in my 20s. Been there. There comes a point where you have to confront some of the problems that lead to that obesity. One of the big ones can be self deception. It's got nothing to do with intelligence, it's psychological. Misjudging one's serving sizes is a biggie. The scale doesn't allow for that.

Set your weight loss to the max - 2 pounds per week - set your activity level at sedentary, enter your exercise amounts and eat back about half the calories MFP gives you for it. Use a food scale and prepare your own food. Your husband loves you and that's wonderful, but you need to be the one to take control of your relationship with food. Give it a month and see how you feel.

annakow

I burn about 300 cal 3 times a week, doing rowing machine for 30 min each time, treadmill, bike and bit of weights. I swim twice a week too. I eat 1490 cal a day. I keep losing weight constantly since february.

ttippie2000

I regularly burn 5000+ calories on a heavy cardio day. It's no big deal as I'm a good sized guy, and that's how it works for us.

That would be very surprising...
Tour de France cyclists burn approx. 3,500 - 4,500 exercise calories a day.

So, I get confused on the calculations. I'm just reading the numbers off my BodyMedia smartphone app for calories burned (Yes, that's a TDEE number). I gotta subtract a 2600 BMR and wind up with a 2400 calorie burn that represents workouts. Sorry if I got confused on the terminology. My Thursdays look like a 60 minute run in the A.M. at 6 mph, then a hard kettlebell class with a 53 or 62 lb kettlebell and an evening boxing class that goes from 1.5 to 2 hours depending on who hangs around for sparring. So, yes, now that I think about it a 5k burn of pure workouts would be a lot.

Mr_Knight

I was only going by logging on this site for calories burn't. When I swim I do one full hour without stopping, I realise now to change it to slower swim. But if it is so wrong why is it still on the site? As a newcomer I assumed all on this site would work well. I assumed what I was logging was correct as per Myfitnesspal.

I hear what you're saying. The problem is that exercise - especially one like swimming - is so variable between individuals. Personally I believe MFP would do a better job if exercises like cycling and swimming were logged by distance rather than by time, but the reality is most people are even worse at figuring out how far they went than they are at honestly noting down the length of time they did the activity.

Here are two calculators I use, one for run/walk and the other for swimming:

http://caloriesburnedhq.com/calories-burned-swimming/
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

I adjust MFP to more or less reflect what those calculators are giving me.

You can see from my point of view this is all a little confusing.

From what I can tell, you are doing an amazing job and really trying to do it right - I'm impressed! And I'm sure that first two stone is only just the beginning for you!

daniellemm1

5-6 times a week I burn 500-600 calories running and/or walking briskly at an incline on the treadmill. I'm right around 200lbs.

sufferlandrian

Since people can and do starve to death I am reasonably confident that eating too little will never ever be a reason why any person can't lose weight. In the long run it might make it harder to maintain the new weight (possibly, maybe depending on how little and what you read)

I understand that starving yourself sounds like the way to loose weight but there are a couple of things at work. First. The more you starve yourself, the more your body wants to store fat for future use. Second, the more you starve yourself the more your metabolism slows down. So although you could starve yourself down to a given weight, you can't starve yourself to a healthy weight. You need to be eating a percentage of your BMR to keep the body from tearing apart muscle and keep it from slowing your metabolism. Exercise will speed the metabolism and starving will slow it. So sometimes if you hit a plateau you need to increase what you are eating with good carbs and proteins and also increase your exercise. The problem with losing weight is that you burn less calories per the same volume of exercise performed. So if you are eating the same and exercising the same, you will reach a point where you aren't loosing more weight.

Also remember that not all exercise is the same. Some exercise builds muscle. Some exercise burns fat. Knowing your functional threshold for either power or heart rate will allow you to know what zones you need to be in to loose fat or build muscle. A bicycle ride at Heart Rate (HR) Zone 5 is going to stress your muscles to the point where they try to build up to make it not so difficult the next time so even though you rode an hour at a HR zone of 5 you won't lose as much weight as the calorie counter would indicate. A HR zone of 2 would burn fat but not build muscle so sometimes toning down the exercise will help you lose weight as well. It's a lot of playing around with diet and exercise levels to figure out how to get off that plateau.

OP, I think you are doing fine and I commend you for getting out and doing the exercise. Keep up the good work. Worry less about the pounds and more about the measurements. Body fat percentage is a better indicator than BMI but it takes longer to see changes. Keep up the good work.

roxylola

I am the OP, I was actually responding to the lady who asked how come she got a real high burn from her swimming then said she was being advised she needed to eat more to lose weight - the "starvation mode" thing again. Basically it is not possible to stop losing weight because you are not eating enough until you are pretty much about to die of starvation. Not saying it is healthy but I think someone who is trying to lose weight is not going to be helped by people telling them they need to eat more. False message in my opinion particularly if they were overestimating a lot the exercise they were doing.

And if your OP type message was aimed at me I am good with what I do and eat, just nosey

JDMarlowe

300-700 on cardio

trisH_7183

My burn for water aerobics is 501 according to Mayo Clinic info & 440 going by MFP.Don't eat them back,so doesn't really matter.
I use MFP numbers.

sanndandi

I use a Polar FT4 and on days I run (doing C25k on week 9 woot!) I burn about 300-350 calories. On the off days I don't run I do JM 30DS and I burn about 200-ish if I am ambitious and really push myself to follow the un-modified moves. I am a 5'5 female and weigh 144.