runtastic/runkeeper

melissa112

Hi,

I'm at the end of my first week back on the healthy eating. I set my activity level at sedentary as I have a desk job, but I'm adding back my calories from walking.

I use runkeeper and runtastic (run both at the same time) to monitor how far I walk. On 4 days it's around 6-7 miles, on the others more like 3-4. I have entered my height, weight, age on both apps but I have no way of recording my heart rate.

The two apps are usually within 0.01 miles of each other (they both use GPS), and within 10 calories of each other. However, I have been halving the calories it tells me I've burned, and adding them on. Do you think this is right, to make up for calculation error? Or should I just eat back the amount it tells me I've burned?

Next week I am planning on ordering 30 day shred so will be doing more exercise, either that, or I will join a gym. But what would you suggest for the calories in these apps?

cburky911

First a question for you...do you prefer one of those apps over the other? I use Runkeeper myself but have never tried Runtastic.

If you're halving the calories you may not be giving yourself enough credit for the calories you actually burned. I usually subtract the calories that body would have burned anyway. (i.e. My BMR is 2500 calories a day. Which means my body burns about 104 calories an hour just to stay alive. So if I walk or run for an hour and Runkeeper says I burned 500 calories, I would subtract the 104 calories from that 500 and log 396 calories in my exercise log) Does that make sense? I'm sure if I'm doing it right, but it works for me.

melissa112

Yes, taking off what you would burn anyway, that makes sense as I wasn't sure whether to do that myself. Or is that just taken into account with calculating your TDEE anyway? I'm not sure? Which is why I haven't taken that into account yet.

To be honest I have always used runkeeper, and just saw runtastic advertised on here. They both give very similar results and I just wanted to use both together to make sure they did. I only entered my weight, height etc on runkeeper.com, though I use the same account with the app so I'm sure it must take these into account to be so similar to runtastic?

You're right, I don't want to undereat by halving. My BMR is 1273 so would burn 53 calories per hour being alive. Ahh I really want to get on the right track, don't know whether to upp them to what it says I burn and see how I go, I wouldn't like to lose the muscle I have.

melissa112

sorry to bump but I really want to get this right