Calculating calories burned during an exercise

donger359

I noticed a discrepancy among the 3 apps that I use to track my workouts regarding the amount of calories burned to a specific exercise. For example, today I went on a 40.9 mile bike ride and my time was 3 hrs, 1 minute. Now my pace wasn't the Tour de France quality but I wasn't sight seeing either. For the majority of the ride, I went as fast as I could with few rest stops. According to MyfitnessPal, I burned 1905 calories. On my GPS app, it calculated that I burned 2510 calories. On a bicycling website, it calculated that I burned 1667 calories. Which number do I use to determine my maximum caloric intake in my food diary? For both the GPS app and the bicycling website, it analyzes my route, speed, and altitude climbs and descents. Thanks for any input/suggestions.

TaraMaria

That is a huge discrepancy between the two websites that aren't MFP. I am not sure how two websites that are supposed to do the same thing came up with two completely different numbers. If you decided to go with the average of the two its 2088.5. At that point, you may as well go with what MFP has to offer you. I'm not exactly sure...I love my trusty HRM for cases like this! )

JForbrizzio

Somebody linked this once when I had a question about my stationary bike.

http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/tools/docs/documents_compendium.pdf

Find your exercise. Multiply the METS number by your weight in kilograms. The total is how many calories/hour you burn.

So example- it looks like you were averaging 10-13.9 mph. The METS # for that is 8.0. Divide your weight by 2.2 to get your weight in kilos. Multiply those two numbers. And since you went for 3 hours multiply that total number by 3. Then you have the calories spent.

JForbrizzio

I should mention that the MFP numbers were closer when I did these calculations for myself.

prettier_me

i'm not an expert, but if it were me, i'd just average the 3 and say it's good enough