How accurate are activities like "cleaning" for exercise?

zenjenn

I normally don't log chores and daily activities, as when logged I feel it too rapidly expands my calorie allowance beyond what I lose on. But I find days like yesterday - I spend 4 hrs reorganizing closets, bagging up clothes, going through the attic, etc. I was exhausted and found it way harder than usual to keep to the 1200 calorie limit. MFP claims 4 hours of cleaning is like 800 calories burned and that seems crazy! I did end up eating about 1500 calories.

Does anyone have any idea how accurate those entries are? Do you log those activities and lose weight using the resulting net calorie allowance?

mcarter99

I don't log it because I use a Fitbit but 200 calories an hour minus your BMR of probably 60ish = 140... sounds reasonable. I think my Fitbit gives me about 2.5 calories/minute for that sort of activity. That'd be 150/hour, but it includes BMR so around 90/hour incremental burn for me.

BryGuy2

I don't rely on MFP to calculate my calories burned. Don't get me wrong, i love this site. But I use my heart rate monitor to properly calculate my calories burned.

CrisN99

The only time I use 'cleaning' as exercise is when I am cleaning out stalls or washing my truck. Both of these last an hour or more and have sweat pouring off of me. I log that as 30 or 45 min of cleaning. More than that and the calorie burn seems way too high.

No heartrate monitor for me, so thats the best I can do.

zenjenn

I don't understand the heart rate monitor thing. Heart rate and metabolic rate are two very different things. I have a much faster than average resting heart rate (around 90 beats per minute - always have, even as a teen of a healthy weight). Just the way I am. But my metabolic rate is clearly on the slow side. How does heart rate tell you anything about calories burned?