Calories Burned Question

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amsthegreat
amsthegreat Posts: 228 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
On average I walk/run somewhere between 13 and 17 miles throughout the course of a day. However, the pace varies so I'm not sure how to calculate the calories I'm burning. Any suggestions? Or perhaps there is a way to calculate the calories burned?

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  • giaciccone
    giaciccone Posts: 257
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    I have the same problem when I vary speeds on the treadmill. I generally try to roughly estimate how long I was going at each speed. I know it seems kind of tedious, but it's one of the most accurate ways I've found out how to work around it.
  • amsthegreat
    amsthegreat Posts: 228 Member
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    The other issue is that this is throughout the whole day, so I'm not constantly walking, but I am generally standing for my entire work-day and I don't stay in one place for long (which is why I walk so many miles in a day). I have a pedometer that I wear everyday.
  • kdfulgham
    kdfulgham Posts: 46 Member
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    HRM
  • ivan1964
    ivan1964 Posts: 435
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    I have the same issue I know its not the best way but I just guess and sometimes I split it one day walking a dog speed the next the slower walk
  • amsthegreat
    amsthegreat Posts: 228 Member
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    HRM?

    I did walking the dog speed, and the calories burned seemed really high. I only put 4 hours time, even though it's over the course of the day. I really have no idea how many calories I burn in a day. I do walk everywhere and work is no exception.
  • bathsheba_c
    bathsheba_c Posts: 1,873 Member
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    This might be a good case for increasing your activity level rather than adding exercise calories since you are doing this on a regular basis.
  • amsthegreat
    amsthegreat Posts: 228 Member
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    I already have my activity level set to "active". Should it be set to "very active"?
  • giaciccone
    giaciccone Posts: 257
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    HRM?

    I did walking the dog speed, and the calories burned seemed really high. I only put 4 hours time, even though it's over the course of the day. I really have no idea how many calories I burn in a day. I do walk everywhere and work is no exception.

    HRM is a heart rate monitor.
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,554 Member
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    I already have my activity level set to "active". Should it be set to "very active"?

    I see you've only just started out with MFP - I suggest that you try it at "active" for a month or so and see how your weight loss progresses. If you lose weight at a reasonable rate (1-2 pounds/week) then don't change anything.
    If you are losing faster than that, then perhaps "very active" would suit you better.

    It's really a matter of experimenting, these numbers are all estimates.
  • pander101
    pander101 Posts: 677 Member
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    From what I've read, the calories that you burn are going to be outside of your daily routine. The activity level is suppose to take into consideration what you do in work, school, chores, ect. Like I work at a vet clinic and am on my feet moving all day. But I don't count that as anything I do towards my exercise calories. I do workouts outside of that because my calorie intake already takes into consideration that amount of activity for work.

    Edit: But you know, if you find yourself hungry a lot of the time. You should play around with the numbers.
  • amsthegreat
    amsthegreat Posts: 228 Member
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    Thank you!

    I actually changed it to active because my average day includes walking to and from work. I'm also on my feet running around the store all day. I only sit for 45 minutes (lunch and break) in a 9 hour work day.
  • travishein2
    travishein2 Posts: 4
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    I found with these fitness logging sites like endomondo or runkeeper. you can manually punch in activities without a map. If you have set it up with your weight and height the manually entered activities do kind of compute calories for me.

    For example if I think I walked about 5 km over a 4 hour period of moving around and standing at my work, entering the activity seems to compute about the calories if i actually walked this (really slow pace). I found too I can create my exercises here, where when I create them with the approximate calories burned for my custom activity for a unit of time, later on when I add another session of this activity, it seems to pretty well extrapolate the calories as the activity tracking app would. So once I get them set up that saves me time, I just enter the hours i was activie doing walking / jogging.

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