Calorie burn calculation?

Sleepunderapalmtree
Sleepunderapalmtree Posts: 14
in Fitness and Exercise
Curious about calorie burn calculation. I am using a Body Media Fit armband for fitness tracking. If my screen tells me I burned 200 calories in a one hour period is that what I would log as my burn?

If I had not exercised during that period, I would still burn calories, just not as many. So..

We'll say I normally burn 50 calories watching TV for an hour.
And we'll say I burned 200 at the gym for an hour.

Would the burn actually be 150 if I would normally burn 50 in that hour anyway?

I hope this makes some kind of sense to someone.

Replies

  • mxmkenney
    mxmkenney Posts: 486 Member
    Great point. I always log less than what MFP and my exercise bike says by 25%. So if it tells me I burned 400 calories in an hour I only log it as 300. I started doing this because the estimates I was getting seemed way too high. I guess it only matters if you plan on eating your exercise calories back. Personally, on most days I do eat back most of my exercise calories, so I can see where this might be hindering my progress if I am in fact eating more calories than I burned!... I'd like to see what others think.
  • Wonderob
    Wonderob Posts: 1,372 Member
    Yeah good question

    I put my HRM calorie burn figure into a spreadsheet to give me the figure I use as my net burn

    Essentially when I'm doing nothing I burn 1.07 calories per minute, so if an hour of cycling burns 520 calories according to my HRM, I only log 456
    520 - (60x1.07)

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