How do I know how much calories I burned?

indigoleighbaker

Hi! I'm trying to do the sustainable weight loss + creating a healthier lifestyle thing!

I've done a ton of research on how to do this sustainably, but I'm 3 days in and whoops! I forgot to include my exercise in my calorie tracking, which means I took a larger calorie deficit than I meant to.

Does anyone know of any reliable sources or ways to figure out how much calories I burned while doing cardio, biking, strength training, walking, etc? Is the MFP exercise calorie tracker accurate? I'm not looking for perfect, but I would like to find reliable, general numbers so that I can make sure I continue taking a calorie deficit sustainably.

tomcustombuilder

You won’t be accurate with how many calories you burn through exercise so don’t get too caught up in it. You have to be careful to not figure too high otherwise it throws your calculations off and has you taking in too many calories.
Experiment for a month and review your progress or lack of it at that point and adjust if necessary.

Retroguy2000

The MFP estimates seem reasonably accurate. In the cardiovascular section there is strength training, walking at various paces, etc. Just enter your total minutes. It takes into account your weight, i.e. it's MET based.

indigoleighbaker

@tomcustombuilder Thanks for the comment! So, it sounds like it's all just guess work and then to review results and adjust? Would you say that the numbers on MFP are general enough that I could use them as a gauge or are they often too high? How do you track those calories? Or do you just do as you said- experiment and review?

indigoleighbaker

@Retroguy2000 Oh, cool. I didn't realize it took my weight and height into account. Thank you!

Retroguy2000

The notion of eating back 100% exercise calories is fundamentally flawed because the human body practices energy conservation. You'll have probably felt this yourself. If you do some high intensity cardio or lifting, you may be very sedentary for hours later, and you may subconsciously fidget less, etc. If it's low intensity like walking, you can probably credit yourself close to 100% to consume back, but for higher intensity stuff it's probably more like 50%.

At the end of the day, or rather end of the month perhaps, if you've been tracking your calories in and your exercise has been consistent, your weight change tells you where you're at relative to your TDEE.

Retroguy2000

indigoleighbaker wrote: »

Oh, cool. I didn't realize it took my weight and height into account. Thank you!

Just your weight, which is all that's relevant.

indigoleighbaker

@Retroguy2000 That makes a lot of sense to me and is really helpful- thanks!

tomcustombuilder

indigoleighbaker wrote: »

@tomcustombuilder Thanks for the comment! So, it sounds like it's all just guess work and then to review results and adjust? Would you say that the numbers on MFP are general enough that I could use them as a gauge or are they often too high? How do you track those calories? Or do you just do as you said- experiment and review?

Whatever methodology you use, it’s the 4-6 week review that will tell you if you’re on the right track or not.

Anecdotally I don’t figure exercise calories.i just figure exercise in my weekly TDEE which is your total daily energy expenditure which includes BMR, NEAT and exercise calories. I found that if your weekly exercise program is fairly consistent you dont have to break it down and figure it separately.

After tracking daily for 20 years I can tell you that you can get by without tracking exercise calories and be as accurate as if you were to.

Another reason that I don’t count exercise calories is workout days I tend to be less active the remainder of the day so the overall calories being burned can be about the same.

You can not count exercise calories, count say, 50% of them or count all of them. It’s personal preference and the proof of your method working or not is in the scale and tape measure.

spiriteagle99

I'm primarily a walker and a runner. I use MFPs calories and eat back all of them. Yes, the MFP calories tend to be high, but they generally agree with what my Garmin says at the end of the day. I lost 50+ lbs. and have maintained that loss for 10 years. I actually burn more calories than the average for my age and size, which helps. Try eating back some portion of the calories and see how your body responds. If you are losing faster than expected or if you are starving all the time, eat more. If you are not losing, then eat less. But give it at least a month to see how accurate the numbers are for you.

Retroguy2000

spiriteagle99 wrote: »

I'm primarily a walker and a runner. I use MFPs calories and eat back all of them. Yes, the MFP calories tend to be high, but they generally agree with what my Garmin says at the end of the day. I lost 50+ lbs. and have maintained that loss for 10 years. I actually burn more calories than the average for my age and size, which helps. Try eating back some portion of the calories and see how your body responds. If you are losing faster than expected or if you are starving all the time, eat more. If you are not losing, then eat less. But give it at least a month to see how accurate the numbers are for you.

Bear in mind that anecdotal evidence is not proof that eating back 100% of (assumed correct) exercise calories is sensible. And I realize you aren't recommending that.

If your calorie target is Z, that comes from the chosen base daily activity setting in MFP (X), added to the estimation of exercise calories (Y). In your case, maybe you're able to consume 100% of Y because the X you chose is too low.

People are coming around to the idea that exercise alone isn't sufficient for weight loss, and I'm sure that's in part because of the energy compensation discussed here. You can burn more calories than normal during an hour of exercise, but then your calorie burning for the rest of the day may be lower for the rest of the day to compensate, and the amount of that compensation likely depends on the individual, the type of activity, etc.

The recommendation I've seen is assume 50% of exercise calories able to be eaten back. Again, if the initial base daily activity setting is incorrect, that will have a huge impact on the end result. This is why it may just be simpler to be consistent with your exercise and weight tracking, and adjust calorie input over time accordingly.

AnnPT77

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

The notion of eating back 100% exercise calories is fundamentally flawed because the human body practices energy conservation. You'll have probably felt this yourself. If you do some high intensity cardio or lifting, you may be very sedentary for hours later, and you may subconsciously fidget less, etc. If it's low intensity like walking, you can probably credit yourself close to 100% to consume back, but for higher intensity stuff it's probably more like 50%.

At the end of the day, or rather end of the month perhaps, if you've been tracking your calories in and your exercise has been consistent, your weight change tells you where you're at relative to your TDEE.

The bolded is the key thing.

I think the "if intense, only count 50%" idea is a bit too general: What matters is your current general fitness level plus your training in the specific sport/activity. Someone who is more fit and more highly trained can accommodate higher intensity with less energy compensation. A beginner who is not very fit may experience more fatigue, so higher energy compensation.

The sweet spot is an exercise session (or combination of activities over a day or few) that generally leave you feeling energized (not fatigued) after workouts and in general. A few minutes of "whew" right after the workout is fine; it's the fatigue carried over into regular daily life that matters. Overdoing exercise is counterproductive for either weight loss or fitness improvement.

That does take a bit of self-observation and knowledge that may not be intuitive on day one, but it's a thing a person can observe. As a person gets fitter, they can also do more without materially increasing fatigue.

For sure, pick some standard percentage of estimated exercise calories to eat back during your 4-6 week trial period (while you get enough personal-experience data to estimate your TDEE from experience). Don't vary it around wildly: That just makes your trial data messier and requires more arithmetic to get a sensible estimate of calorie needs given your typical workout schedule and eating routine. You're testing to find a formula (set of logging, eating, activity habits) that you can carry on with after the trial period, to get reasonably predictable results going forward. "Stable experimental conditions", essentially.

I've always estimated exercise calories carefully, but ate back 100% of them from the beginning (over 9 years, so far). However, I was not adding new or unaccustomed exercise in order to lose weight or increase fitness; I was largely continuing an exercise routine I'd followed for a dozen years while still obese. Some of that exercise was pretty intense, but I was reasonably conditioned to doing it: No noticeable fatigue penalty.

Best wishes!