lifting weights - cals burnt?

The amount of calories you burn during weight lifting is so small I don't even count it.


This was taken from the Livestrong website:


Far too many people are focused on how many calories they burn while they're in the gym, but this is shortsighted.

Stop focusing on how many calories you burn in the gym and instead focus on how your body expends calories outside the gym. You burn calories throughout the day regardless of what you are doing, but exercise helps increase the rate at which you burn those calories. With most forms of traditional steady-state cardio, you expend calories while you're exercising, but once you stop, you quickly go back to your normal metabolic rate.

Strength training, however, builds muscle, and more muscle helps you burn more calories -- even when you're doing nothing but sitting on the couch.

"Strength training is a critical component of any program than emphasizes long-term fat loss," said Alwyn Cosgrove, co-author of the book "The New Rules of Lifting." Think of it like this: Muscles are "thirsty" from a metabolic perspective. The more muscle you have, the more fuel you are constantly burning. This is the advantage strength training offers if your goal is to lean out. A treadmill or elliptical trainer is often seen as the quick fix to shed body fat, and they are certainly useful if your goal is to improve cardiovascular health, endurance or simply to burn some extra calories, but strength training is a powerful ally.

won't overly go into my details, short answer is MFP has a calculation under cardio, I find it to over estimate. If you just want a guide it is ok if you want something more accurate I'd suggest investing in a HRM

The amount of calories you burn during weight lifting is so small I don't even count it.


This was taken from the Livestrong website:


Far too many people are focused on how many calories they burn while they're in the gym, but this is shortsighted.

Stop focusing on how many calories you burn in the gym and instead focus on how your body expends calories outside the gym. You burn calories throughout the day regardless of what you are doing, but exercise helps increase the rate at which you burn those calories. With most forms of traditional steady-state cardio, you expend calories while you're exercising, but once you stop, you quickly go back to your normal metabolic rate.

Strength training, however, builds muscle, and more muscle helps you burn more calories -- even when you're doing nothing but sitting on the couch.

"Strength training is a critical component of any program than emphasizes long-term fat loss," said Alwyn Cosgrove, co-author of the book "The New Rules of Lifting." Think of it like this: Muscles are "thirsty" from a metabolic perspective. The more muscle you have, the more fuel you are constantly burning. This is the advantage strength training offers if your goal is to lean out. A treadmill or elliptical trainer is often seen as the quick fix to shed body fat, and they are certainly useful if your goal is to improve cardiovascular health, endurance or simply to burn some extra calories, but strength training is a powerful ally.

That article doesn't say lifting doesn't burn many calories. It says people need to focus less on the burn during the workout and choose a program that provides the a good "afterburn" as well.

I wear a HRM when doing P90X. Yesterday during my tricep, shoulder, and chest workout I got a total burn of 510 calories in an hour and my HR was consistently over 135 and often as high as 170. Strength training done right in rapid circuits can get you a great burn.

Also, since calories are a measure of energy, and energy can be related to work done (physics), if you know how much you lifted and by what distance you lifted it, you should be able to work out the energy you MUST have expended to overcome gravity.

I've never done that calculation, and I have no idea how it matches up to MFP.

(It's also complicated to get right because you should theoretically only measure the vertical component of the lift, not any horizontal component due to form, and there's probably some wasted energy in there somewhere in the muscles, and if you're doing a curved path lift such as a bicep curl there will be an appreciable horizontal component too, which is a different energy-expended forumula).

The amount of calories you burn during weight lifting is so small I don't even count it.

I disagree. Last year I had a personal trainer for lifting and I wore my HRM during my sessions with her and I burned anywhere between 300-600 calories in a one hour session depending on what muscle groups we were targeting that day.

HRM's do not work with weight training. For all the information you can handle on that subject, Google it.
Any reading you get from your HRM during weight training will be grossly overestimated.

I can't see how it wouldn't be recording it properly. Considering I always lifted extremely heavy with my trainer, and my heart rate was elevated the entire time. I always left my training sessions exhausted and drenched in sweat. So for me, I know I had decent calorie burns. But I'm definitely curious about this, so I'll google it later today when I have time.

The amount of calories you burn during weight lifting is so small I don't even count it.

I disagree. Last year I had a personal trainer for lifting and I wore my HRM during my sessions with her and I burned anywhere between 300-600 calories in a one hour session depending on what muscle groups we were targeting that day.

HRM's do not work with weight training. For all the information you can handle on that subject, Google it.
Any reading you get from your HRM during weight training will be grossly overestimated.

This is both right and wrong. Weight training can be extremely cardiovascular if you're doing it like crossfit or even any high volume rest/lift scheme. I used to ballpark my volume days around 300-400 calories burned over an hour or so. The key, being that you take very short rest periods between sets, HR is elevated for the entire hour, and you are doing moderate weights with moderate intensity.

What my man is talking about up there is relatively high intensity weight training, which does not burn much in the act, but the stress it puts on your body, coupled with the increase in muscle function and size, will lead to a higher resting metabolism (eventually). I would agree that cardio is the best short term answer to burn calories, and weight training will be a very long term approach. Muscle costs calories to maintain, therefore the more you have, the more you burn just maintaining weight. Fat does not need any calories to sustain, so it'll sort of just sit around, therefore not adding to your resting metabolism.