Calories burned exaggerations

tashjs21

HRMs are a different story, I agree...its the people that say they burned 600 calories walking for 30 minutes and Im like...WHAAAATTT?!! Lol

If someone is overweight, out of shape, and just starting a workout program, they could be burning 600 in 30.

How does it hurt you?

Highly unlikely, in my opinion. 10 calories/minute is what most people MAX at. That's fit people, so obese people will burn more. But double? 20 calories/minute? I'd say maybe 15, and that's being generous.

It doesn't hurt us the readers, it hurts the dieter. The MFP plan of 'adding back' exercise doesn't leave you much room for deficit, especially if you're smallish and use BMR as your floor instead of 1200. Then you get people who don't understand why they have to do so much math and why they're not losing. And it sucks for them.

^ This!!

thepanttherlady

Why is everyone jumping on the original poster! I get annoyed by people over exagerrating their burns as well. Even if they do claim to use a HRM. Can I just remove them? Yes but sometimes I might not want to.

I find it impossible to burn 1,000 calories doing housework. Seriously. No way. SOme people really do need some education on what they are acutally burning.

I'm confused as to why the calories burned by OTHER people, annoy you? I'm not a doctor or scientist but am pretty sure what they eat and burn won't cause you to gain/lose any weight.

And you, ma'am, are late to this discussion and need to actually read through the previous posts before posting. We covered that pages ago.

And you sir, shouldn't make an assumption.

I have read through every post but my phone at work rang before I could hit *reply*. I apologize if my not responding pages earlier bothered you.

Get over it.

Sezmo83

MFP tells me that the slow paced 90 minute walk me and my dog did today burned 345 calories. Apparently my usual fast 30 minute walk to the fields, the hours slower walk around the fields and the fast 30 minute walk home burns around 500 calories. Everything I've checked gives me roughly the same amount of calories burned for the walking I'm doing. I don't have a HRM so all I can do is go by averages. I don't eat all my exercise calories back though, just enough to keep me at a minimum of 1200 net calories per day.

I think if what you're doing is working then keep at it. If it's not then it's time to look at whether you're over estimating calories burned, under estimated calories eaten or what.

enyo123

Just FYI, I have a HRM. I don't consider myself to be particularly fit. I still burn around 10 cal/min doing Turbo Jam, and roughly 5 cal/min hiking. "shrugs" My husband, who is far larger than me and far less fit, burns about double what I do simply because he's about double my size.

I too burn about 10 calories/min at Turbo Jam and I'm not particularly fit or overweight and I'm one of those 'high HR genetically' people. Ok, I can buy a very large man burning 20/min., I guess. But 33/min.? That's a toughie. You'd have to be over 600 lbs. and running to burn 30, according to that Runners World article. I would think if someone could burn 33 calories/min. they'd have a problem keeping weight ON.

Lower resting heart rate, and lower blood pressure. (Not quite treatable low, but still low.) And, yeah, I'm presently a whole pound overweight.

Yeah, I'd find that 33 calories a minute is insane.

prism6

I go by the machines numbers and MFP numbers.. Everything no matter how precise you make think it is,is an estimate. I am just an overweight person hoping to get healthy, so, I am moving and I am eating better...it's all good!

jac264

Yesterday I ran for 51 minutes. I run a pretty consistent 9 minute per mile pace.

HRM: 520 calories
MFP for running 9 min/mile for 51 minutes: 520 calories

I did a 30 day shred video once too:
HRM: 189 calories
MFP for circuit training for 25 minutes: 189 calories

I was kinda baffled that they were exactly the same! For some reason MFP is pretty accurate for me

chrystee

It also depends on how overweight you are. The more weight you have to lose, the more you'll burn compared to someone who doesn't have as much.

I have a co-worker that was upset because I was burning more calories than her doing cardio for the same length of time. I was burning 100+ more calories per session than she was. She'd also already lost 80 some pounds at that point, I hadn't.

It depends on more than that. My workout partner weighs less than me, and always burns more than me, but my heart rate doesn't go up as high as hers does.

BrienJD

As long as I'm losing weight at 5-10 pounds a month I'm happy with what the machines say. As some have said already, If I stop losing I'll adjust. Right now I'll take any victory that I can escpecially if it makes me feel like I am accomplishing something and my scale agrees.

Sheilav330

Your right about the buring 1000 calorie during an hr of zumba i am at 189 and i burn about 750 depending on the intensity of the song and class too lol so there u have it.

chrystee

From that article:

Now that you understand why running burns 50 percent more calories per mile than walking, I hate to tell you that it's a mostly useless number. Sorry. We mislead ourselves when we talk about the total calorie burn (TCB) of exercise rather than the net calorie burn (NCB). To figure the NCB of any activity, you must subtract the resting metabolic calories your body would have burned, during the time of the workout, even if you had never gotten off the sofa.

You rarely hear anyone talk about the NCB of workouts, because this is America, dammit, and we like our numbers big and bold. Subtraction is not a popular activity. Certainly not among the infomercial hucksters and weight-loss gurus who want to promote exercise schemes. "It's bizarre that you hear so much about the gross calorie burn instead of the net," says Swain. "It could keep people from realizing why they're having such a hard time losing weight."

---

YEP.

This is true.. I will say my old HRM had me burning more than my newer one did. When Polar redid their HRM's, they recalculated so that your calories burned is minus your BMR.

kuger4119

The problem with ellipticals is that the MFP calculator in no way takes into account your actual effort. I see people on them without any resistance just swinging away. You see other people working their tails off. No way that they are burning the same calories. Treadmills are more reliable because you can't fake speed on a treadmill.

Personally, I've used MFP's numbers for 4 1/2 months and I've lost about 19 lbs in 19 weeks. Weird huh?

chrystee

Your right about the buring 1000 calorie during an hr of zumba i am at 189 and i burn about 750 depending on the intensity of the song and class too lol so there u have it.

Ok, I have GOT TO DO THIS CLASS!!

BazAbroad

Looks like a very popular topic lol,
my tuppence worth.
I agree a lot of the estimations of MFP do seem on the high side, which is why I go off what the machines in the Gym say,
to a point that is,
Our Gym has two rowers, and if you set them up the same and did the same workout you would get a totally different calorie burn.
Some of it is the calibration of the machine, some is that it works off air resistance, a dirty internal fan wheel on one would be different to a clean one.
Needless to say there must be many variables for every machine.
On strength training,
some people (like myself do mini circuits and hardly rest) others sit around half the time watching video's as they recover ...
if they just use a general strength training, one of us must be wrong.
I would say, just be wise and skeptical, if your following everything blindly on MFP, you may just be kidding yourself,
and that's not what where here for,
not just to go thru the motions, we want results.

After thought - sorry to rant - I love going on the rower but I can do it more with arms or like absolute leg power, different techniques for the same exercise, that makes a hell of a difference too.... just saying.

bcmallwalker

I go by the machines numbers and MFP numbers.. Everything no matter how precise you make think it is,is an estimate. I am just an overweight person hoping to get healthy, so, I am moving and I am eating better...it's all good!

My thoughts exactly! The truth is the truth and my body knows how many calories I actually ate & burned as opposed to my most careful estimations. So I don't really care what numbers I log all I care about is that I am exercising and changing my eating habits. The weight loss follows naturally.

sirabe

I tried my best to read this thread and wow! people are defensive.

cristaine

My metabolism is utter crap so I know my estimates are likely wrong. Ive been eating back my calories because people say "it's the right thing to do" but let me tell you, I think I am just a very efficient energy storer and can do a ton of exercise that even feels intense to me, but I'm efficient at utilizing my energy so I don't burn a ton. Remind me to thank my ancestors for THOSE particular genes.... *grumpy*

It sucks, but at 40 years old I am finally coming to the conclusion that is my metabolism and my destiny is either to work WITH it or keep failing LOL So, maybe I won't eat back all my calories from now on and give that a shot. Seriously, it can't hurt!

The one thing that always bothered me about tracking exercise, is that one time long ago I read that calculators and machines gave you total burned for that period of time AND work, and didn't deduct the calories you would have burned during the time. So, it would be inflating the numbers because we already have base available calories here and our exercise doesn't DEDUCT the basal stuff from that exercise time frame, from the actual exercise burn INDEPENDENT of what you would have burned anyway. Does that make sense?? For example, if just by breathing I burned 100 calories for a time period, and ran from the same time period, the machine would say 300. Now, if we put 300 calories in on top of our normal we would actually be adding 100 calories onto our days, so could end up overeating by a lot in a week if your exercise is high in the hours for a week...

Anyone know anything about whether that is true or not?

fatmom51

I have found that the treadmill I use at the Y, and the numbers on MFP are pretty close. The other day, I did 35 minutes of interval walking at 3 mph with a few inclines thrown in, followed by 5 minutes of cool-down at about 2.5-2.7 mph. Treadmill said 285 calories, which seemed reasonable given my weight. MFP came up with about 250 for 35 minutes at 3 mph.

It is interesting to note that when I went on the www.healthstatus.com and for kicks entered 12 hours of sleeping and 12 hours of sitting, it came up with an overall calorie burn of about 2,600 for the day. Sleeping burns about 10 calories a minute; sitting awake burns roughly 1.7 calories a minute, according to this website.

But according to MFP, I currently have a BMR of 1,760 and a TDEE of 2,120, assuming a sedentary lifestyle and I am set at 1,200 to lose just under 2 lbs. a week. All these numbers are very confusing.

jofjltncb6

Why is everyone jumping on the original poster! I get annoyed by people over exagerrating their burns as well. Even if they do claim to use a HRM. Can I just remove them? Yes but sometimes I might not want to.

I find it impossible to burn 1,000 calories doing housework. Seriously. No way. SOme people really do need some education on what they are acutally burning.

I'm confused as to why the calories burned by OTHER people, annoy you? I'm not a doctor or scientist but am pretty sure what they eat and burn won't cause you to gain/lose any weight.

And you, ma'am, are late to this discussion and need to actually read through the previous posts before posting. We covered that pages ago.

And you sir, shouldn't make an assumption.

I have read through every post but my phone at work rang before I could hit *reply*. I apologize if my not responding pages earlier bothered you.

Get over it.

Huh? My point was, the OP's reasons for bringing this up were previously covered, and they were beyond simply the impact to her efforts.

Clearly, you and I are not on the same page...and that's okay with me.

Qskim

You guys can't keep going off the numbers in MFP, nor what your elliptical/spin/treadmills say. If you went on the elliptical for an hour, as I do (level 17/20), and it says you burned 1200 calories...chances are you most likely did half. In the end isn't it better to underestimate it and NOT eat back those hard earned calories. Just sayin'....

I find this constructive. A lot of people I see on here burn extreme amounts of calories doing very light activity, eat all of their calories back and wonder why they are gaining weight. I think this helps those who are having problems.

I see several members every once in a while post they burned 400 calories for 1 minute of breastfeeding. I don't know much about


breastfeeding, but if their next post is that they gained 2lbs that week I would direct them here.

You r right...u know nothing about breastfeeding. The 400cal PER DAY is right and can b even higher or lower depending on how often u feed. And obviously it's not per minute cos on average a feed can take around 45 - 60 min for little babies and if they were doing a log per minute that's 45min x 400 cal. Commonsense would tell u something not right n I would have checked b4 assuming they were overestimating. And yeh I was a breastfeeding mum but went to bottle cos baby not happy n I was a bloody wreck and hungry! I absolutely admire those women who can breastfeed

Wifeofdaniel

I personally only consume a set amount of calories everyday 1300, with the exception of 1 day a week where I consume 2000 to prevent plateaus. So even if I burn 1000 or think I did it doesn't really matter. Now if someone is eating based on calories burned then they should make sure it is as accurate as possible if they want results. HRM is the best way to go.