Calories burned by difficulty

lcvaughn520
lcvaughn520 Posts: 219 Member
edited January 21 in Fitness and Exercise
Tonight I went for a run. Running, for whatever reason, is VERY challenging for me. I entered in my exercise to MFP and it estimates the amount of calories I burned based on time and speed. Just out of curiosity, how does difficulty factor into the equation? I know MFP can't tailor their numbers for each individual, but for some people, running the speed that I run would be SUPER easy, but for me, it is extremely difficult. Do I burn more calories doing the same exercise as someone else for whom it is easy? I don't think the answer will affect how many exercise calories I "eat back," but I am just interested in hearing what people think! People on here are so knowledgeable.

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  • Azdak
    Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
    Tonight I went for a run. Running, for whatever reason, is VERY challenging for me. I entered in my exercise to MFP and it estimates the amount of calories I burned based on time and speed. Just out of curiosity, how does difficulty factor into the equation? I know MFP can't tailor their numbers for each individual, but for some people, running the speed that I run would be SUPER easy, but for me, it is extremely difficult. Do I burn more calories doing the same exercise as someone else for whom it is easy? I don't think the answer will affect how many exercise calories I "eat back," but I am just interested in hearing what people think! People on here are so knowledgeable.

    Aerobic exercise at a given intensity has a relatively fixed energy cost. Calories burned depends on absolute intensity ( oxygen uptake) times body weight.

    Two people with the same weight running the same speed will burn roughly the same calories, regardless of fitness level. I suppose if the effort represents a really high % of your max, you might get a slightly higher "afterburn", but it would be trivial.
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