How much should I REALLY log for my exercise

jayclock

I am doing fine with weight loss and aiming to get from 92kg to about 80kg. I am very muscular and sporty just want to be faster at the sports I do and also and slimmer for my wedding. (I was 105kg about 10 years back!!). Height about 1m77 (5.9)

I am given 1640 cals per day by MFP which I can just about cope with, but do tons of exercise (and have been doing for years). For example today i ran 10k at lunch in 56 mins. MFP gives this as 895 cals which sounds high. A 3 hr fast bike ride at the weekend shows at 2600 cals which is a massive amount. Like 10 Mars bars worth of energy

Up till now I have been "eating back" around half the cals. Does that sounds anywhere close to correct. Admittedly a 3 hr ride leaves me ready to eat ( I would have a snack on rides over 2h30 as from experience I need it) but an extra 2600 cal sounds far in excess of what I burnt doing the exercise.

So how does anyone recommend the best way to calculate it? I am thinking that begin very athletic already will have got me more efficient (i.e. an unfit person doing a three hour ride alongside me will burn more cals?)

Thanks!

Jay

sfbaumgarten

Rather than logging the exercsie cals, maybe you should just change your overall activity level setting.

jayclock

wil have a look. That does mean that I presumably average it over the week? The downside is that I will have a lot more cals on a rest day than i really need and not enough to binge on on the hard days?

knra_grl

I have been using this - it's a bit lower than MFP - my walk would be 296 with MFP's calculations and this one puts it at 201 cals burned >>>> http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calories_burned.htm

mjhooperii

The usual reply for this question is... it depends! I use gym equipment (mostly exercise bikes and treadmills) and when I bike a 60 min session at a more or less constant 150-160 BPM, it shows as 560 calories. I take 10% off when logging exercise (note 10% of what the machine tells me, not what MFP tells me) and tend to estimate high on food. MFP puts 60 minutes of moderate biking at 575 calories.

Maybe this is because the average person lookin to lose weight is heavier and loses more calories? I don't know to be honest. All I know is that for me the 10% off has been working. I'm 181lbs now and the past month I'm losing on average 1.5 lbs a week (my goal) given how I log.

So what's the answer here -- I say pick a way to do it, log for a month, and see if you are hitting your goals. Don't use a week or 2 as your basis since like all good things, it takes time.

Good luck!

dany_m

Do you use a heart rate monitor to estimate your calorie burn? I'm asking because MFP is quite inaccurate. In my case MFP over-estimates the calorie burn by approx. 20%.

LKArgh

For running it depends on distance and weight, not on how fit you are or how hard it is for you to run said distance, so for your case: 10k*92kg*1.036=963 calories, so the MFP calculation might actually be on the low side. At least this is the formula I have been using for years and that I have heard quoted most frequently. I am not aware of any formula for cycling, as I guess it also depends on speed, but for 3 hours, it does not sound that off.

autumnblade75

I really like this calculator for running: http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

I've had good results using the numbers it gives me. And 150 calories per mile doesn't sound outrageous to me, either.

As far as how you log it? I'd say look at your results. If you're eating them all back and still losing, keep logging what MFP says. If you're not losing as much as you expect, you could:

-log fewer exercise calories
-eat back only a portion of your exercise calories
-recalculate your calorie goal

jayclock

many thanks ! appreciate the replies. Will have a read of some of those links and also look at settings

Am losing weight which is the main thing !

chip20001

For running it depends on distance and weight, not on how fit you are or how hard it is for you to run said distance, so for your case: 10k*92kg*1.036=963 calories, so the MFP calculation might actually be on the low side. At least this is the formula I have been using for years and that I have heard quoted most frequently. I am not aware of any formula for cycling, as I guess it also depends on speed, but for 3 hours, it does not sound that off.

I'm sorry, but I kind of have a hard time seeing how everyone at a given weight burns the same ammount of calories running a given distance at a given pace. I'm a fairly competitive running and could probably run 10 miles @ 7min/mile without my HR getting above 140-150. Someone my same weight but a less efficient runner would have to work much harder to sustain 7min/mile for 10 miles, which would result in a higher sustained HR. It makes sense that I would have burned significantly fewer calories during the run. Is there some part of the puzzle that I'm missing?

I guess I ask this because the MFP calculations seem really high to me. Running 10 miles @ 7min/mile would put me having burned 1184 calories. My suspicion is that the number of calories generated is a good estimation for someone in average shape who runs less efficiently than I do.

In other words, a prius is going to burn a lot less gas (calories) driving a mile than my old ghetto ford that weighs the same amount.

Thoughts?

autumnblade75

For running it depends on distance and weight, not on how fit you are or how hard it is for you to run said distance, so for your case: 10k*92kg*1.036=963 calories, so the MFP calculation might actually be on the low side. At least this is the formula I have been using for years and that I have heard quoted most frequently. I am not aware of any formula for cycling, as I guess it also depends on speed, but for 3 hours, it does not sound that off.

I'm sorry, but I kind of have a hard time seeing how everyone at a given weight burns the same ammount of calories running a given distance at a given pace. I'm a fairly competitive running and could probably run 10 miles @ 7min/mile without my HR getting above 140-150. Someone my same weight but a less efficient runner would have to work much harder to sustain 7min/mile for 10 miles, which would result in a higher sustained HR. It makes sense that I would have burned significantly fewer calories during the run. Is there some part of the puzzle that I'm missing?

I guess I ask this because the MFP calculations seem really high to me. Running 10 miles @ 7min/mile would put me having burned 1184 calories. My suspicion is that the number of calories generated is a good estimation for someone in average shape who runs less efficiently than I do.

In other words, a prius is going to burn a lot less gas (calories) driving a mile than my old ghetto ford that weighs the same amount.

Thoughts?

That other runner who isn't so efficient is probably not going to be able to keep up a 7 minute per mile pace for the entire 10 miles.

Aren't Prius a hybrid? I can't think of a human equivalent to a vehicle that runs off of two different energy sources. We humans only have calories.

jayclock

Ok, first point is that there is a useful calculator here http://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/diet/weighteffect and yes I can tell you light people go faster at least!

I have reviewed all your comments and worked out that I am going to leave things as they are. I am losing weight very steadily by continuing my eating targeted at 1600 cals, and eating back half the exercise cals (can be a lot after a long ride or run)

Started 3 Jan at 91.7 and now 87.3. That is average 0.88kg per week which is almost exactly 2 pounds. Very happy with that. I am the sort of all or nothing person who would find it easier to do that than eat more and lose weight slower!

sbarella

I usually eat back my NET exercise calories, aka the calories I burned during exercise minus the calories I would've burned if I had slept all along. I don't have a HRM, I use MFP or Shapesense to estimate the (gross) burn.
http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/net-versus-gross-calorie-burn-conversion-calculator.aspx

It's easy for me because at MY current stats I burn approximately 1 kcal/minute just by staying alive, so if I log 30 minutes of whatever exercise I've been doing I subtract 30 calories. It's not much, but It's very useful because I'm short, I don't have much to lose and I want to eat more than the miserable 1200 standard calories suggested by MFP, hence my calorie deficit is very small and I can't afford to overestimate my exercise calories.
From what I've seen, many people don't care about this, they just eat back all their exercise calories and still lose a lot. It's up to you, really.

jayclock

The hard days for me are the ones I do no exercise, because I then get what feels like too little to eat! Days of massive exercise are very familiar for me so I do not feel a need to have massive food to compensate