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Calories burned from strength training

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newloafofbread
newloafofbread Posts: 46 Member
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I'm not sure if this one has been covered before, but I'm having some trouble finding an answer for this. I've been losing weight since January and until 2-3 weeks ago I was doing cardio only. I was making calories easily on days I was eating whole foods and I was steadily losing weight. Now that I've started lifting weight, I don't add in exercise calories anymore. Everything I've heard has said that even wearing a heart rate monitor, you can't accurately measure how many calories you've burned from a strength training workout.

The problem is that I'm STARVING. Not only am I coming home from these 2 hour exhausting workouts and feeling like I need to eat my weight in protein, but my blood sugar is getting low a lot more and I'm just tired. I don't have energy. But I'm at my calories every. single. day. Realistically I know I'm using energy and burning calories doing weight lifting, I'm exerting myself and should be able to eat back those calories like I did with cardio. Is this true? And if it is, how do you figure out what you can eat back from weight lifting?

Thanks everyone

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  • MelStren
    MelStren Posts: 457 Member
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    bump.....
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    What type of lifting routine are you doing? Is it 'traditional' lifting or more a circuit style routine where you heart rate is elevated for much of it?
  • jaxxie
    jaxxie Posts: 576 Member
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    Bump!!!!
  • barbaratrollman
    barbaratrollman Posts: 317 Member
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    Bump! This is one of the big questions I have too.
  • newloafofbread
    newloafofbread Posts: 46 Member
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    What type of lifting routine are you doing? Is it 'traditional' lifting or more a circuit style routine where you heart rate is elevated for much of it?

    I would have to say it's more circuit style, my heart rate is up and my rest periods are pretty brief. I do a lot of cable machines in quick succession and am supposed to be kinda jogging between the machines. At the end of plan A I do 50 squats with 20 pounds raised above my head in free weights, and I can definitely say it's up then...

    I would type up the basic plan for you but I don't have it with me at the moment.
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    No need to type up the plan - thank you though.

    I would use MFPs settings for circuit training (although I have heard that is a euphemism around here :wink: ) and plan to eat 50 - 75% of those back to take into account inaccuracies. If you are finding your results are not as expected after a few weeks, tweak up or down as appropriate.
  • newloafofbread
    newloafofbread Posts: 46 Member
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    Thank you! I will start there and we'll see what happens...
  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
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    I don't mean to hijack, but would Sara and/or SS be interested in my writing up a conservative estimate for weight lifting Calories burned thread? I see this sort of question on the forums all the time.

    It would require each individual to do a little math - or at least pop some numbers into a spreadsheet. And it would not take into account individual fitness or effort - that's why it would only be a conservative estimate. But what I have in mind would be a decent estimation, at least based upon basic physics principles.
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