Calories burned exercising vs. sedentary time?

Drkrew

I have a HRM and if I, for example, walk for 60 minutes it informs me I have burned 550 calories. I then plug that into MFP for extra eat back calories. I have also worn my HRM while reading or watching TV in the evening for a few hours and averaged out the "calories burned" while being sedentary and that is around 180 Kcal per hour. Here is my question: Wouldn't my true calories burned, the ones that I should eat back, be closer to 370 (550-180) since I would have burned the 180 anyway just sitting on my *kitten*?

Stormyyy

Bump.....Very good question, hope someone can come up with an answer to u

Azdak

You can get that detailed if you want to, but the difference is often not significant enough to go the to extra work. The other problem with your particular scenario is that HRMs cannot accurate estimate calories at rest, so those numbers are meaningless to begin with.

mistikal13

You burned the 550 by walking so those you would plug into MFP. The 180 would just be part of your daily routine so you don't need to eat those back.

unwritten87

I think mfp already has the calories you burn just laying around doing nothing built into the calculator…

neurochamp

I always subtract my kcal burned while sedentary from my kcals burned during workouts (if the workout is at least 30 min) and enter that number for my workout calories. For example, my HRM says I burn 80kcal/hour just sitting, so if I work out for 30 min and my HRM says I burned 350kcal, I enter 350-40=310kcal burned into MFP for my workout.

For what it's worth, your kcal burned while sedentary sounds a bit high. If you're burning 180kcal/hour, you would be burning something like 4000kcal/day at rest (180 * 24 hours = 4320kcal burned/day while doing nothing). I could be wrong, but you might want to double check what your HRM reads at rest so that you don't end up depriving yourself of too many calories if/when you subtract your resting burn from your workouts.

Drkrew

Elstein, your correct. My BMR is 2200 (90 per hour) based on a recent body comp analysis I had, but even being sedentary at home, there are still additional factors that could have increased my heart rate to the point that I was burning 180 per hour. From what I understand, and I could be wrong, the BMR number is the baseline calories burned to keep you alive.

Maybe a happy medium between the two numbers? Maybe I should subtract 140 Kcals per hour from the number my HRM says I burn during exercise for a more accurate reflection of my true "eat back" calories? Thoughts on that?

neurochamp

I would say go with the number from your body comp analysis. As Azdak points out, HRMs aren't really made to measure resting calorie burn, so they can be very inaccurate. I trust mine because it spits out a number reasonably close to my daily calorie needs (according to my body comp scale).

Of course, if you decide to subtract a higher number that shouldn't necessarily be *bad* (basically you're just allowing fewer "eat back" calories). If you want to compromise and subtract the "happy medium" number from your workout calories before you enter them in MFP, I say go for it *BUT* make sure that your daily calorie goal is reasonable, and if you're crazy hungry (I know I am after heavy cardio workouts), don't beat yourself up if you decide to eat back a few of those extra calories

P.S. please excuse edits, my fingers apparently don't like keyboards today and I can't type for ****

Drkrew

Your talking to a two finger, hunt and peck typist. No sweat.