How do you measure calories burned

motal003
motal003 Posts: 28
in Fitness and Exercise
So how do you measure how much calorie you burned from lifting weights?

Also, I did the stairmaster today for 30 minutes, and I sweated like a pig, but the machine said I burned like 190 calories, and then I did the eliptical for 30 minutes, and I burned 255, and did not sweat as much. So are the machines correct?

Replies

  • RedArizona5
    RedArizona5 Posts: 465 Member
    Get a HRM (heart rate monitor) If the equipment you use records your age, weight AND heart rate its accurate-the more info it has the better-if heart rate is missing-I would not trust the numbers-they will be lot lower unless you want to under calculate on purpose to get to your goal faster :)
  • RangerRN507
    RangerRN507 Posts: 124 Member
    its not as many calories as many people wish were so. workouts dont hold a candle to the amount of energy it takes your body in a day just to run its normal metabolic activity and to operate the brain, NS and organs. Arnold Schwarzenegger had his workouts analyzed by a team once and they only estimated his workouts to be around 600 calories...and this was a guy incline benching 405 for reps...so ya...and running doesn't take as much energy as people think either the body is designed to run long distances, the fact your sweating is just the body cooling off but doesn't represent actual energy expenditure the body is amazingly efficient at running....

    all that being said I do 16-20 sets of lifting every day plus a few miles of running every other day and I only guess mine to be about 4-500 and its been pretty accurate in terms of my caloric intake to my body comp and weight
  • RedArizona5
    RedArizona5 Posts: 465 Member
    so ya...and running doesn't take as much energy as people think either the body is designed to run long distances, the fact your sweating is just the body cooling off but doesn't represent actual energy expenditure the body is amazingly efficient at running....

    all that being said I do 16-20 sets of lifting every day plus a few miles of running every other day and I only guess mine to be about 4-500 and its been pretty accurate in terms of my caloric intake to my body comp and weight
    //quote

    Well how does the heart rate measure up especially when ones heart rate is beating very heavy versus days where one just breezes through a run.
    I mean doesn't the heart rate tell you how difficult the work is? If someone stops running after being able to run for an hour and then goes outside in the heat to run and feels their heart pumping through their chest at rapid speeds-thats gotta be doing something to your metabolism or how much you burn...
  • hoffmanchristina
    hoffmanchristina Posts: 22 Member
    I measure my calories using a Polar FT7 with included chest strap HRM. It uses you height, weight, and heart rate to measure calories burned.
  • kimberlyblindsey
    kimberlyblindsey Posts: 266 Member
    so ya...and running doesn't take as much energy as people think either the body is designed to run long distances, the fact your sweating is just the body cooling off but doesn't represent actual energy expenditure the body is amazingly efficient at running....

    all that being said I do 16-20 sets of lifting every day plus a few miles of running every other day and I only guess mine to be about 4-500 and its been pretty accurate in terms of my caloric intake to my body comp and weight
    //quote

    Well how does the heart rate measure up especially when ones heart rate is beating very heavy versus days where one just breezes through a run.
    I mean doesn't the heart rate tell you how difficult the work is? If someone stops running after being able to run for an hour and then goes outside in the heat to run and feels their heart pumping through their chest at rapid speeds-thats gotta be doing something to your metabolism or how much you burn...

    I feel like the more fit you become the more efficient your body becomes at adjusting to more challenging workouts, case in point, today I did a FitnessBlender workout titled 1,000 calorie workout; it was almost an hour and a half long with warm up and cool down and included a HIIT routine, some lifting then some core workout. I wore my HRM to gauge how much of this 1k calories I would attain, and from beginning to end I burned 570. Now, I'm small-ish, 120 lb and cardio comes pretty easy for me, and I got into the 160s here and there, but I burned nowhere near 1k; however if that was a straight cardio WO then definitely would have been possible, just not very sustainable to workout at that level for that long, imho.

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