New to Strength Workouts

MyHealthiestYears23
MyHealthiestYears23 Posts: 14
in Getting Started
So I know that strength exercises do not burn as much calories as cardio.. and I heard that supposedly after doing strength workouts your body continues to burn calories after the workout is over and is more beneficial to muscle growth and overall fat burn than cardio alone - or so i heard (if you can verify this that would be great).

soooo my question is why are burned calories not calculated on MFP when you enter in a strength workout? (check out my exercise log for today as an example). I ask because I want to know if I need to eat more calories because of the calories burned from the strength workout - even though they are not calculated on MFP?

Just to give you some insight on what I am working on and what my goal is - I am a female who is petite with some thigh, hip, and stomach fat; but not much. So I would like to do some strength workouts to burn what fat is there but mainly to build muscle definition and tone. I am at a healthy weight/BMI so weight loss is not a major concern - I prob will gain weight as I gain muscle so I am just basing my results on how I feel and what muscle definition I can see instead of focusing on my weight.

My workout routine: I am doing the Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30 - 4 days per week. I rested with no exercise for one day and the other two days I spent doing strength workouts and pilates.

I am not sure if I am doing everything right to see the results I want - which would be trimmer hips and thighs, abdominal definition, and just a tone body over all. Please give me any tips and suggestions. I know I need to work on my sweet tooth and I would like to increase my dumbbell weights (which are currently 3lbs each) but other than that I'm not sure what else to do or to change. Help! Please try your best to address all my questions, Thanks!!

Replies

  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    soooo my question is why are burned calories not calculated on MFP when you enter in a strength workout? (check out my exercise log for today as an example). I ask because I want to know if I need to eat more calories because of the calories burned from the strength workout - even though they are not calculated on MFP?
    From the help section of the site:
    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.

    http://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/11170

    From what your describing, it sounds like you might want to start a weightlifting program.
    Stronglifts 5x5 and New Rules of Lifting for Women (NROLW) are both good programs.

    Stronglifts 5x5 progress thread:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/948109-progress-photos

    New Rules of Lifting for Women group:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/102-new-rules-of-lifting-for-women-nrol4w

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