calculating caloric cost of exercise
aagaag
Posts: 89 Member
This is actually not Switzerland-specific, but it is nevertheless useful and therefore I shall post it.
If you do a lot of training, and use a heart-rate monitor to calculate your caloric expenditure, you may have noted that the very same training unit will result in decreasing numbers of calories spent. This may be demotivating - and it is completely wrong!
In reality, this issue is an artifact due to how calories are being calculated. The HR monitor computes the spent calories on the basis of the heart rate: if your HR is real high, it assumes that you are working out real hard. Now, with progressive training you get fitter and fitter, and consequently the heart rate needed to exert any given (fixed) effort gets lower and lower over time. This is because your heart is also a muscle, and with training it can accomplish work more effectively.
However the rub is, the HR monitor now "believes" that you have been training less intensively and computes fewer calories - although you are spending just as many! :-)
This is rather significant. I bike up the Uetliberg, almost daily. One year ago, that workout would result in 1300 kcal. Now, it is more like 1000-1050 kcal. (Of course I am a few kg lighter now, and that definitely reduces the caloric cost as well. For things like elliptical though, your weight is less of a factor).
Thought that these good news may be welcome to quantitatively-obsessed weight losers (like me).
If you do a lot of training, and use a heart-rate monitor to calculate your caloric expenditure, you may have noted that the very same training unit will result in decreasing numbers of calories spent. This may be demotivating - and it is completely wrong!
In reality, this issue is an artifact due to how calories are being calculated. The HR monitor computes the spent calories on the basis of the heart rate: if your HR is real high, it assumes that you are working out real hard. Now, with progressive training you get fitter and fitter, and consequently the heart rate needed to exert any given (fixed) effort gets lower and lower over time. This is because your heart is also a muscle, and with training it can accomplish work more effectively.
However the rub is, the HR monitor now "believes" that you have been training less intensively and computes fewer calories - although you are spending just as many! :-)
This is rather significant. I bike up the Uetliberg, almost daily. One year ago, that workout would result in 1300 kcal. Now, it is more like 1000-1050 kcal. (Of course I am a few kg lighter now, and that definitely reduces the caloric cost as well. For things like elliptical though, your weight is less of a factor).
Thought that these good news may be welcome to quantitatively-obsessed weight losers (like me).
0
Replies
-
But surely, the device that you use can be adjusted/updated as you get fitter and fitter and hence the amount of calories burned should then be accurate.
Certainly my Garmin device allows me to do this.0 -
Thanks Mark for pointing this out. You are absolutely correct. My HR monitor is a high-end Polar watch (RS800), and the software allows you to set the caloric expenditure (kcal/min) for each heart rate. This is because the relationship between HR and kcal/min isn't linear (it is approximately exponential).
The caveat is, of course, that it isn't trivial to find out the parameters describing your burn rate as a function of HR and fitness. The only precise way to do that would be to do a treadmill unit while connected to equipment that measures CO2 in your exhaled air. The latter is a bit too much even for me (although I am a huge nerd and I love technological gadgets)0 -
Interesting topic.
I have pretty much given up on calorie-burning as a meaningful indicator of the amount of weight loss/fat loss you should expect. At the start of my get fit regime I ran virtually every day, losing the easy pounds slowly but steadily without really doing much about diet. Then of course I hit a plateau where the fat was no longer coming off, and I started to work on diet. Low fat/high fibre/high carb was an absolute bust. Slow-carb was good for losing more fat but then came the next plateau. Now I am losing again with low carb/moderate protein/high fat along the lines of Drs. Phinney and Volek.
Along the way I have gone from almost daily hour-long endurance cardio (40K/week running at the peak) to minimal maintenance exercise (2 x slow-motion weights per week @ 20 mins per session, 3 x Tabata sprints per week, 1 x 2-hour bike ride every 2nd week). Speaking in terms of calories burned, that's a big reduction, but I have to say the only reliable indicator of weight loss/gain was diet. Eat more bad stuff, and no matter how much I exercised, the weight would go up. Eat less bad stuff, no matter how much I exercised, the weight would go down.
This was really brought home to me on work road trips. At the start when I went on road trips without doing regular exercise and not watching the diet, I came back heavier. In the next phase when I got more serious about exercise but not diet, I still came back heavier. Only when I adhered to my dietary rules on the road did my weight remain on track. Now I can go on short trips of 2-3 days and not bring exercise gear, as long as I stick to the dietary rules I will be OK.
Of course exercise is probably good for you in all kinds of ways for strength, aerobic capacity and getting good hormones flowing, but I no longer believe the amount of calories burned during exercise is a worthwhile barometer of fat loss.0 -
I totally agree to all of your points, PCA. My experience has also been that exercise without intake control does not bring about weight loss (however, for your overall health it is still better than not exercising!) because you will tend to eat more and nullify any extra calories you may have earned. The main raison d'etre of this site, indeed, is to help monitoring caloric intake and balance it against caloric output.
Also, I am familiar with your experience about traveling. Particularly intercontinental flights in business-class are deadly: the flight attendants literally stuff you with snacks non-stop, and it takes a lot of strong will to avoid overeating during such flights!
That said, there is certainly value in accurately determining the caloric cost of exercising. Crucially, it will help setting goals right, by means of guiding the choice and size of meals. If the goal is to lose 1 lb/week, you need a caloric deficit of ca. 750-800 kcal/day. Knowing that one's exercise reliably adds e.g. 1000 kcal expenditure means better planning and, ultimately, improved life quality. But I guess these facts are obvious, and they are the main reason why we are all on this site!0 -
How are all your diets going....would you guys find it useful to create a group for swiss/english speaking people who are trying to lose weight. I thought I was one of the few using this site?0
-
How are all your diets going....would you guys find it useful to create a group for swiss/english speaking people who are trying to lose weight. I thought I was one of the few using this site?
Hi Swissfit, and welcome!
as to your question - well, that is exactly what this group is about!
best wishes
AAGAAG0 -
aagaag, you're right. We're all on here to track caloric intake I guess. What's good here is that you can track your nutrients as well - particularly fat v protein v carb v sugar.0
