We are pleased to announce that as of March 4, 2025, an updated Rich Text Editor has been introduced in the MyFitnessPal Community. To learn more about the changes, please click here. We look forward to sharing this new feature with you!

Calorie burn calculation?

Sleepunderapalmtree
edited February 20 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)
This discussion has been closed.