Can I trust the exercise database?

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  • SuffolkSally
    SuffolkSally Posts: 964 Member
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    I just worked out that 80 minutes walking for me, on farly flat terrain, not majorly overweight but pretty unfit, burns about 400 calories according to both HRM, MFP, and website calculators. So if you were covering hills and (sorry to assume, it's just your profile pic) are rather more overweight, that burn doesn't seem too far off.
  • Jenism1
    Jenism1 Posts: 149 Member
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    I just bought a HRM and compared to the MFP site, the HRM seems really high. Like I put in 90 minutes of soccer in MFP and it said 962 calories burned...my HRM say 1200 calories burned. Now I worked my butt off but I don't know how accurate the HRM is. It is hard to tell. My HRM gives me way more calories burned weight lifting than the MFP site. I'm 5'2' and weigh 145 pounds.

    I try not to eat back all my calories so I guess it doesn't really matter.
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
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    Using only the database has worked fantastically for me
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    I just bought a HRM and compared to the MFP site, the HRM seems really high. Like I put in 90 minutes of soccer in MFP and it said 962 calories burned...my HRM say 1200 calories burned. Now I worked my butt off but I don't know how accurate the HRM is. It is hard to tell. My HRM gives me way more calories burned weight lifting than the MFP site. I'm 5'2' and weigh 145 pounds.

    I try not to eat back all my calories so I guess it doesn't really matter.

    If you have a decent HR monitor, they're pretty accurate. You can check by comparing what your HRM tells you and then go to a website with a VO2 calculator and do a side by side. HRM is pretty much worthless for weight training as weight training isn't an accurate measure of your VO2 max in a given session.
  • BeachGingerOnTheRocks
    BeachGingerOnTheRocks Posts: 3,927 Member
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    It depends entirely on your body weight, and to some extent your sex. It is pretty accurate for my 194 pound husband. It is off by almost 50% for me. Not sure why that is.

    My RHR is pretty low because I do a lot of cardio. And I tend to do a LOT of cardio and strength on workout days, between 90 and 140 minutes, and if I tried to eat back over 1000 calories from working out, I'd be seriously overeating, about 600 above TDEE that incorporates the same activity level.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
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    Thanks heaps for the input, guys, I'll be looking into HRM's sooner rather than later.

    Just checked a couple other sites and I'm getting between 480 and 550 calories burnt. I just dont feel like I possibly could have burth that much!

    Ah well, I'm only going to eat back what I need to hit my daily goal before exercise until I get a reliable HRM.
  • 3dogsrunning
    3dogsrunning Posts: 27,167 Member
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    Thanks heaps for the input, guys, I'll be looking into HRM's sooner rather than later.

    Just checked a couple other sites and I'm getting between 480 and 550 calories burnt. I just dont feel like I possibly could have burth that much!

    Ah well, I'm only going to eat back what I need to hit my daily goal before exercise until I get a reliable HRM.

    There is no need to do that. You can at least a portion of them back.

    HRMs are not the be all end all. They are still estimates. People have been successfully losing weight long before (and still do) without one.
    IMHO, the value of a HRM is highly overrated here.
  • Topher1978
    Topher1978 Posts: 975 Member
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    I rely on MFP calculations and I lose more weight than MFP tells me I will. So, yes, you can trust MFP.
  • Topher1978
    Topher1978 Posts: 975 Member
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    And I burn and eat some heavy calories on some days!!

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