Gross and Net calories burned?

needtoloseafewpounds
needtoloseafewpounds Posts: 161 Member
edited November 1 in Fitness and Exercise
Since I lost about 9 KG (20lbs) now, my calories burned from exercise is reduced almost by half so I decided to upgrade my workout routine today. That's when I decided to look for a calories burned calculator to plan ahead and I was blown away.

http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/articles/net-versus-gross-calorie-burn.aspx

Is it really true that the calories burned that I was logging are only Gross calories burned?

According to the website, this is what gross and net calories would be:

Gross Calorie Burn

Gross calorie burn is the absolute total amount of calories burned while performing any given activity. It includes the calories that your body burned specifically to perform the activity itself, plus the additional calories burned throughout the duration of the physical activity that your body must continually burn at all times to digest food, keep tissues alive, and support the function of vital organs. The extra calories burned in addition to those required for physical activity are collectively known as your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), and they represent the calories that your body would have burned anyway, even if you had just been relaxing on the couch and not performing any physical activity. Try our Resting Metabolic Rate Calculator to find out what your resting metabolic rate is.

Net Calorie Burn

Now that you know what gross calorie burn is, net calorie burn is easily understood. Net calorie burn, for any given physical activity, is the amount of calories burned only to perform the physical activity, and no more. As opposed to gross calorie burn, net calorie burn does not include calories burned to support your RMR.


So in other words, our RMR is for some reason calculated into the burned calories :(
So in other words, when I thought I should be logging 214 for walking 3.5 mph for an hour on leveled ground, I was really only burning 119 calories for specifically walking 3.5 mph for an hour. The remaining 95 calories burned was for being alive.

Did anyone else know about this and is this really true?

Replies

  • logicalmaniac
    logicalmaniac Posts: 15
    Unless you can be hooked up to an expensive caloric meter, I would not focus on calories burned during exercise. New research has come out that shows that most software that and online calculators are really off when it comes to calories burned.

    I don't even calculate them any more. I put in sedetary for my calories burned per day and just think of exercise as icing on the cake. The majority of your calories burned per day (80+ percent) comes from RMR (just being alive). The rest come from moving around.

    A lot of people want to add exercise calories burned so that they can eat more calories throughout the day. The problem is that we often grossly miscalculate how many calories we actually burned and then we wind up eating more calories and decreasing our deficit. That is why some people wind up plateuing.

    I hope this helps a little.
  • needtoloseafewpounds
    needtoloseafewpounds Posts: 161 Member
    Unless you can be hooked up to an expensive caloric meter, I would not focus on calories burned during exercise. New research has come out that shows that most software that and online calculators are really off when it comes to calories burned.

    I don't even calculate them any more. I put in sedetary for my calories burned per day and just think of exercise as icing on the cake. The majority of your calories burned per day (80+ percent) comes from RMR (just being alive). The rest come from moving around.

    A lot of people want to add exercise calories burned so that they can eat more calories throughout the day. The problem is that we often grossly miscalculate how many calories we actually burned and then we wind up eating more calories and decreasing our deficit. That is why some people wind up plateuing.

    I hope this helps a little.

    That actually makes a lot of sense and that should explain why some of my weeks were slower than the others! Some weeks I work out more and eat some or all of the calories I logged back and other weeks I would work out less or have less work out days and would just generally stay within my goal (not eating back calories). Thanks a lot for your answer it really means a lot to me to hear confirmation from someone else ^_^
  • logicalmaniac
    logicalmaniac Posts: 15
    No problem.

    I always ask people: If the goal of exercise is to burn fat, why would you want to eat those calories back.

    The only time activity should be a factor, is when you go from fat loss to maintenance and muscle growth. Or, when you are at the lower limits of body fat.

    Keep up the good work and stay consistent. You will make progress.
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
    No problem.

    I always ask people: If the goal of exercise is to burn fat, why would you want to eat those calories back.

    The only time activity should be a factor, is when you go from fat loss to maintenance and muscle growth. Or, when you are at the lower limits of body fat.

    Keep up the good work and stay consistent. You will make progress.

    The answer to " I always ask people: If the goal of exercise is to burn fat, why would you want to eat those calories back." ..... is this:

    If you are using MFP as DESIGNED your calorie deficit is based upon ZERO exercise. Therefore adding exercise to the equation creates a larger deficit still. When the deficit is too large, you will be more likely to burn muscle (along with fat).

    I totally agree that calorie burn estimators are too high...... eating back some of your calories to maintain muscle mass seems a safer bet to me.

    Keeping existing muscle is far easier than building new muscle.
  • logicalmaniac
    logicalmaniac Posts: 15
    Totally agree with keeping muscle. The fact is the body usually only utilizes muscle when one of two things occur while dieting one is not doing resistance training and two is your body fat is very low. A study was done on women. Researchers put women on 800 calories a day for a long period of time. Two groups were done. One was cardio only and the other was weight training. Both lost fat fast. only the weight training group lost no muscle.
  • poetikfotografy
    poetikfotografy Posts: 3 Member
    So what is better to log in MFP, gross or net calories??!
  • CipherZero
    CipherZero Posts: 1,418 Member
    For what it's worth, I've found Runtastic to be fairly accurate on calorie for walking and running and ate them back while following the deficit MFP wanted. It worked.
  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
    Most HRMs and pieces of gym equipment report gross calories. If one wants to be as accurate as possible, they need to calculate net calories.
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