Bad news about exercise calories?

emmab0902

I have heard that when you calculate calories burned through exercise, you are supposed to subtract your resting calorie burn. Eg if your normal RMR is say 60 calories per hour, and you exercise for an hour and burn 240 calories, you should only consider that to be an additional 180 calories burnt through exercise (240 - 60 = 180) not 240. I am not sure about this, and wondered what others think?

IronSmasher

If it were possible for the dead to use HRM and cardio machines, I could see the point in the arguement, but one would assume that it's already factored in.

Perhaps we could argue about EPOC to the contrary?

Gee45

I suppose you could crunch every number. But also there is an after burn effect where you burn more calories for a while after you stop working out than you normally would. Since noone figures in that afterburn, why worry about the calories you burn normally in that hour subtracted off your exercise amount?

emmab0902

If it were possible for the dead to use HRM and cardio machines, I could see the point in the arguement, but one would assume that it's already factored in.

Perhaps we could argue about EPOC to the contrary?

I am not overly bothered either way as I think the calories burned on MFP are hugely inflated and don't eat them back anyway. Just found it interesting.

TrainingWithTonya

This is true if you are using a HRM because the formulas for HRMs don't always have them subtracted out already. In fact, most of the ones I've used go with total calorie burns for the time not subtracting out RMR. Say your BMR + Activity (what people on here call maintenance and what I was taught was RMR) is 2400 calories per day, then you would already burn 100 calories an hour (2400 / 24 = 100). Then if you exercise and burn 200 calories in an hour of walking according to your HRM, then you've only burned 100 calories extra. If you add 200 calories to your total and eat back your exercise calories, then you're eating an extra 100 calories. The same is true of calories burned being figured by METs, but with them you can subtract 1 MET before you estimate calories burned from exercise as 1 MET is the amount you burn naturally. From what I've been taught, the METs compendium I use already has the 1 MET subtracted. I've figured my calories via the METs compendium and also by what MFP uses and they are the same (at least for the things I've checked it against), so I think MFP already does the subtraction for you.

And for those that I've just confused with the whole MET thing, I'll try to explain them. 1 MET is one Metabolic Equivalent, or the RMR. A MET level for exercise is how many times your normal resting metabolism you raise your metabolism. So, a 2 MET exercise burns twice as many calories as just sitting still (but you would only add 1 MET in calories to your log because the first MET is from your normal activity) and an 8 MET activity burns 8 times more calories then your normal daily routine.