Machines at gym

broomnic

Hi I use some of the machines in the gym like chest press, leg press etc and they record the calories, is there a way to add this on the diary?

kmmealey

There is an Exercise Tab at the top of the page (in a computer view). Once you click that tab, there are 2 choices: Cardiovascular or Strength Training.
MFP doesn't assign a calorie "burn" to any stregth exercises. However, you can track them in there for your own personal tracking. Then, you can go to the Cardiovascular section & look for "Strength training" in the list of cardio exercises. You enter how many minutes you worked on Strength Training (chest press, etc) & it assigns a numeric value. Very general ball-park number but it's the best I can find in MFP. presumably because everyone exerts different effort, etc during strength training (?) it's hard to estimate.
Alternatively, you can actually "add" exercises in & I think you can add the 'calories' burned also.

cjh03

I always use 'strength training' under the cardiovascular section to record when I lift. As kmmealey mentioned, it is pretty ballpark, but gives you something to track if you don't have a way of recording the calories at the gym.

broomnic

Brilliant thank you !

Caniac68

I like the response of Strength Training under cardio from those above. I hadn't noticed that and did some research of my own to see what a typical person burns doing strength training and came up with an estimate of my own. Based on LiveStrong, you have to figure in the weight of the person, the length and the intensity of the training to calculate it and it is not an exact science. They give a range of 90 cal/hour for a 125 lb person doing vigorous training up to 266 cal/hour for a 185 lb person doing the same. However, they also state that doing cycle training, a person burns 159-231 cal for an 8 exercise, 8 minute circuit training. Since I am doing circuits...I created a straight up the middle personal cardio exercise of 200 cal/hour. But, I think I will check out the strength training option as I rarely pump through all 8 exercises in that time span! Here's the link to that information if you are curious: http://www.livestrong.com/article/256854-calories-burned-through-strength-training/.

Quick update: checking on the strength training cardio item...it's pretty close to my "guestimate". Not bad...I may just use that as it takes other factors into account that I didn't when I made my own exercise for working on strength.