How to calculate calories burned?

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arivera1982
arivera1982 Posts: 10
in Health and Weight Loss
ok I need some help I have found some great exercises and they are not listed in fitness pal... I found online that if you take your weight and multiply that by .096 that gives you the amount of calories that you burn per minute. Is that correct?

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  • joe_d
    joe_d Posts: 73 Member
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    Was that weight in kilograms or pounds? Either way, that would be a very, very crude approximation at best. It doesn't take into account how hard you're actually exercising--there's going to be a big difference in calories burned say, between running for 10 minutes and walking for 10 minutes.

    if you really want more accuracy, get a heart rate monitor that also gives you calories burned. There are lots of threads out here about them and which ones folks use. I use Polar FT7 and like it a lot. Even these only give approximations of calories burned, but the HRM will use your heart rate to estimate calories. Since heart rate goes up in response to your muscles' oxygen needs, this gets you closer to how many calories are actually being burned.
  • arivera1982
    arivera1982 Posts: 10
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    that was in pounds... That is why I wanted to check because alot of exercises I do are not listed in the fitness pal exercise category.
  • joe_d
    joe_d Posts: 73 Member
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    Wow. If I were to use that formula, it'd say I'm burning quite a bit more than my HRM does. So I'd be careful, especially if you plan to eat those exercise calories back. On the other hand, I'm an old guy and maybe my multiplier should be a lot smaller than .096. :smile:

    I think the important thing is that you're exercising. Anything you do to get moving is great. Estimating the calories is only important if you are planning to eat them back, so in that case you'd want to be more precise. Oh, and I guess the other reason to estimate your burn would be to see if you can increase it over time. Exercise by itself is great, but trying to increase endurance, strength, speed, etc. is what helps keep me interested in doing it.

    Best of luck to you!
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
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    I haven't found too many things that aren't listed. What types of things are you doing?
  • jennapflumm
    jennapflumm Posts: 16
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    Wow. If I were to use that formula, it'd say I'm burning quite a bit more than my HRM does. So I'd be careful, especially if you plan to eat those exercise calories back. On the other hand, I'm an old guy and maybe my multiplier should be a lot smaller than .096. :smile:

    I think the important thing is that you're exercising. Anything you do to get moving is great. Estimating the calories is only important if you are planning to eat them back, so in that case you'd want to be more precise. Oh, and I guess the other reason to estimate your burn would be to see if you can increase it over time. Exercise by itself is great, but trying to increase endurance, strength, speed, etc. is what helps keep me interested in doing it.

    Best of luck to you!

    agreed... u should take your heart rate... have a stopwatch even one on ur phone and start it while holding ur neck at the paulse count how many times it pumps for ten seconds then multiply that number by 6... there are alot of calculators online to show you how many calories you burned by your heart rate.
  • now_or_never13
    now_or_never13 Posts: 1,575 Member
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    Are you able to purchase a heart rate monitor? You can get them online for decent prices. Provided you get a decent one, they are the best at getting an accurate calorie burn reading.

    If you can't get a HRM, best thing to do would be to monitor your HR throughout your exercise. Take an average and use one of the calculators online to find out how many calories you burned based on your HR.

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