Calorie count for weightlifting

FujiTattooz

I don’t know why there’s a section that includes lifting weights and a selection of what the exercises are, only to get to the bottom and have it say N/A. I work out hard resistance training and it’s not just cardio that results in weight loss. For decades we’ve known this. You can get the same results with weight training so don’t you think you should incorporate even an ‘average’ of calorie burning for each exercise? Even run of the mill apps like carb manager for keto people have this feature.

AnnPT77

To get calorie credit for weight training, go to the Cardiovascular section and log it as "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)". Assuming it's normal reps/sets type training format, with normal short rests between sets, log the whole number of minutes you were doing the workout, including those short between-set rests.

The strength training section of the MFP exercise database is just intended for logging rep/set counts and weight, not calorie expenditure.

durden

Our program currently calculates calories for exercises logged in our "Cardiovascular" section only. Estimating the calories burned from strength training is very difficult because it depends on a variety of factors: how much weight you lifted per repetition, how vigorously you performed that exercise, how much rest you took between sets, etc. Because of this, we do not automatically calculate how many calories you burned from strength training exercises.

However, if you like, you can search for the same or similar exercise in our "Cardiovascular" database. If you can not find the exercise, you can search for the exercise "Strength training" in the cardiovascular database, but please be aware that this is only a rough estimate, and can be fairly inaccurate.

If you know how many calories you have burned via a heart rate monitor or other tracking device, you can add a custom exercise to your personal database.

​Alternatively, we have also recently added a new "Workout Routines" feature (only available in English for now) that allows you to build a gym routine from a large database of both strength and cardiovascular exercise that converts strength exercises into a single workout that adds to your diary.

To learn more about Workout Routines please visit this link

For additional information on strength exercises, please reference https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/muscle-matters/.

AnnPT77

Heart rate monitor as such is unlikely to give an accurate calorie estimate for strength training: Heart rate goes up for many reasons, and pretty much the only reason that correlates semi-accurately with heart rate is steady-state moderate intensity cardio. That's only even accurate if a person either has a tested HRmax or happens to be a person for whom the age-based HRmax estimates are reasonably close. (For a fair fraction of people, the formula is close; but it's meaningfully off for a large minority.)

Heart rate is used to estimate calories loosely because oxygen consumption tends to correlate with calorie expenditure, and heart rate tends to correlate with oxygen. IOW, heart rate is a useful but approximate proxy.

Strength training often increases heart rate because of intra-body pressure or strain, among other potential factors. That makes heart rate iffy for estimating strength training calories. Close enough to be workable? Maybe.

IMU, some fitness trackers now use more complex algorithms - not just heart rate - to estimate calorie expenditure when we're strength training.

I tried the MFP workout routines for estimating calories when the feature was first new. Maybe - probably - it's improved since then. At the time, I felt it gave me an unrealistically high calorie estimate for a strength training routine.

FWIW, this might be useful in thinking about calorie expenditure for strength training:

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/research-spotlight-expenditure-resistance/

For myself, as someone who doesn't do hours of strength training, I just go with the MFP cardiovascular exercise database estimate, which coincidentally usually runs close to what my fitness tracker estimates (using who knows what algorithm). Close enough, for me. Someone with hours per week of lifting might want to investigate further.

nossmf

FWIW, I am one of those "hours per week lifting" guys, and I've been using the cardio entry "strength training" for 15+ years now. Some days I may feel it's a little too generous; other days I walk/crawl away exhausted and plenty sure I burned more calories than the site says. But I just figure it averages out over the long run, and I'm over 40+ lbs lower weight than when I started using MFP, with plenty of muscle to show for my gym time. So even if it's not perfect, it's good enough for me.