Calories burned....

Mike523

No this is not another "should I eat back my exercise calories" thread... We have plenty of those!

What I'm wondering is... does anyone enter their exercise calories subtracting what they would have burned during that time had they not been exercising? Let me explain...

If my daily calorie burn at a sedentary activity level is say 2400 calories, that means I burn on average 100 calories per hour just sitting doing nothing.

If I exercise for an hour and my HRM says I burned 500 calories, didn't I really burn only 400 extra calories since I would have burned 100 during that time even if I had not exercised?

Am I thinking about this too much???

mishmash73

yes you're thinking about it too much. if MFP didn't want you to get the full 500 credit, it would say you had 400 to eat vs 500... and 100 calories under or over estimated isn't going to take you off your path :O)

MissAnjy

No, you're absolutely right. You should. I don't bother but that's because i'm too lazy to figure it out, even though i'm sure it wouldn't take much, lol

houlee

I've been wondering the exact same thing! I use a Garmin 405CX heart rate monitor, and I was trying to figure out if it took those into account the calories I would have burned even if I just sat around. I couldn't find a straight answer using Google searches. Here's hoping somewhere on MFP knows.

jfer1977

I too am an over thinker and have thought about this. I don't do any math when it comes to my calorie burn during exercise tho. I just go off of what my bodybugg says I've burned during that time. I know how many calories I've consumed and with my bodybugg I know how many calories I've burned all day. But, I also tend to over calculate calories and under calculate calories burned through exercise at times. Just to be safe.

I probably wasn't any help and I'm sorry about that if I wasn't.

Good luck in your decision about how to log calories burned.

drosenbauer

That's a really interesting question. When you wear your HRM when you're NOT exercising, does it show that you're burning calories? Or does it only show calorie burn when your HR is above a certain threshold?

Whenever you exercise, you are burning additional calories, but I guess it really depends on how your HRM works whether you're burning 500 *additional* calories (beyond the 100) or 500 *total* calories (including the 100).

Also keep in mind that it's probably impossible to divide your daily BMR by 24 to get an hourly rate. You're going to burn more at 3 PM than 7 AM, and you're going to burn more at 7 AM than midnight, and you're going to also burn more at 3 AM than midnight, simply because of the way the body's daily rhythms work.