Figuring calories burned help please

buffywhitney
buffywhitney Posts: 172 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
At 160 lbs. MFP says I burn 145 calories per hour cooking/food preparation. Although I am on my feet doing some sort of food prep the entire day (6.5 hrs. minus break time) this would add up to be 942.5 calories daily. I find this hard to believe. Can anybody help me figure the accuracy of my work day caloric burn?

Replies

  • vorgas
    vorgas Posts: 741 Member
    A better idea would be to bump up your lifestyle modifier a notch. For example, if you have it set on Sedentary, you probably aren't. The calorie burn from just standing and taking steps now and then is tough to determine.
  • buffywhitney
    buffywhitney Posts: 172 Member
    bump
  • gigglesinthesun
    gigglesinthesun Posts: 860 Member
    part of the problem with cleaning/cooking/tidying up/shopping etc calories is that they are activities that you did whilst gaining weight too. If they would represent a truly significant calorie burn, a lot of people probably wouldn't be here.

    I mean if you are standing whilst doing your job then you are not sedentary, but at least lightly active. When I changed my setting my cal allowance only went up like 140 cals a day, so I don't know how much you would burn, but I supposed a HRM may help you with finding that out.
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,267 Member
    A better idea would be to bump up your lifestyle modifier a notch. For example, if you have it set on Sedentary, you probably aren't. The calorie burn from just standing and taking steps now and then is tough to determine.

    This...
  • jmayerovitch
    jmayerovitch Posts: 71 Member
    I agree with those who said modify your lifestyle modifier. If you're on your feet most of the day for work you should prboably set your activity level to "Active".

    The other problem with calculating calories burned for activities like that (in addition to other very light activities such as liesurely walking, etc.) is that a large portion of the calories you are "burning" during those activities are calories you would normally burn anyway without doing anything at all. So it's basically like you're double counting.

    For example:

    Say I go for a slow walk for an hour. MFP or my HRM tells me I burned 200 calories. But my TDEE is 1800 calories. So in that hour I'm already taking into account that I burned 75 calories. My actual calories burned would be 125.

    There really isn't an accurate way to calculate calories burned for something like that. Even a heart-rate-monitor, which is usually way more accurate that what MFP says, isn't accurate below 120 bpm.
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
    If this is your work then bump up your activity setting to lightly active because just being on your feet isn't a huge calorie burner and you probably aren't moving around a great distance at a brisk pace while cooking. If this is your home life daily would you like to come to my house for a bit?

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