Do you use weight lifting as "exercise" when doing TDEE?

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  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
    If I set the spreadsheet for 0 I go from 1850 to 1575. So an extra 250 calories, actually. Worth the 10 minutes it took me to set up, I'll be honest.
    I ran the spreadsheet out of curiosity, and it gives me a whopping 140 extra calories/day when I entered in my weight training vs. 0 weight training. Which again equates to losing an extra 1/4 lb a week or can buffer any error in my food intake or estimate of how much low-intensity walking I do in a week (seriously, who accurately counts that?).

    An extra 100 Cals a day makes a difference when you're in the lower ranges. With no exercise counted, and a 10% deficit (because I'm trying to lose the last few pounds), the calculators tell me to eat 1250 Cals. No. I'm hungry and shaky on that.

    Count the walking and the weights and I'm up to 1550 Cals, which I find easy to do. Plus, I'm losing weight at the predicted rate, so the calculations can't be too far off.
  • pavrg
    pavrg Posts: 277 Member
    Count the walking and the weights and I'm up to 1550 Cals, which I find easy to do. Plus, I'm losing weight at the predicted rate, so the calculations can't be too far off.
    A lot of the reputable sites I've read on the subject advocate calculating your own personal TDEE after a month or so of data, discarding the first week or so because results are wonky when you first start a new diet and workout regimen. So at that point, you're not using anything except for your own personal average weight gained/lost vs. average calories eaten.

    You raise a good point that it's more significant with smaller people. The 140 calories for me is a 5% difference in TDEE (and a difference I never feel the need to eat); for my wife it would be 11%.
  • glreim21
    glreim21 Posts: 206 Member
    "If you are getting a higher heartrate out of weight lifting than cardio, you're not pushing yourself when you do cardio, you have poor overall fitness, or you're doing some funky routine with weights using them for cardio rather than strength training. "

    Just for the record this is untrue...my resting heart rate is 48, I have completed 5 half marathons, one triathlon and countless 5 km and 10 km races, my max heart rate while running is usually 150 lifting is 160. So yes, I push myself at cardio, I am just very efficient at it. I still stand by saying you absolutely burn calories lifting weights and it should be counted in you TDEE calculation. Sitting on the couch for 30 minutes vs lifting weights for 30 min is NOT the same calorie burn.
  • astrampe
    astrampe Posts: 2,169 Member
    "If you are getting a higher heartrate out of weight lifting than cardio, you're not pushing yourself when you do cardio, you have poor overall fitness, or you're doing some funky routine with weights using them for cardio rather than strength training. "

    Just for the record this is untrue...my resting heart rate is 48, I have completed 5 half marathons, one triathlon and countless 5 km and 10 km races, my max heart rate while running is usually 150 lifting is 160. So yes, I push myself at cardio, I am just very efficient at it. I still stand by saying you absolutely burn calories lifting weights and it should be counted in you TDEE calculation. Sitting on the couch for 30 minutes vs lifting weights for 30 min is NOT the same calorie burn.
    this and more of this.... :flowerforyou:
  • pavrg
    pavrg Posts: 277 Member
    You shouldn't. It's a very negligible amount. Each set probably takes you 10-20 seconds to complete. So 12 sets would equate to a whopping 2 minutes of work spread out among 45 min to an hour, during which you never elevate your heartrate to its max nor keep it there for a prolonged period of time.

    Nope, I know I'm not. I cannot even imagine what 12 deadlifts or barbell squats in 10-20 seconds looks like. I guess I could do it if I were using 20-30lbs, maybe.

    For me, 30 minutes of lifting is 20 minutes of moving heavy stuff with 10 minutes of rest. It's also never taken me the full 60 seconds of rest to set up between different sets, even if I have to set up steps or go in the aerobics room for a Swiss ball.

    This guy does 15 reps in 25 seconds. Stop putting the weight down for 10 seconds everytime you do a deadlift rep:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NneSdmuKo08

    For a normal deadlift workout of 4-6 reps (it is a power lifting exercise after all), it would take you 10-15 seconds to complete the set. It just feels longer because you are exerting yourself with deadlifts a lot more than other lifts when done heavy. But I also wager you don't do deadlifts @ max load more than twice a week.
    Just for the record this is untrue...my resting heart rate is 48, I have completed 5 half marathons, one triathlon and countless 5 km and 10 km races, my max heart rate while running is usually 150 lifting is 160. So yes, I push myself at cardio, I am just very efficient at it. I still stand by saying you absolutely burn calories lifting weights and it should be counted in you TDEE calculation. Sitting on the couch for 30 minutes vs lifting weights for 30 min is NOT the same calorie burn.

    What did you place? What was your time? I can do a half marathon too and never get my heartrate up, but I won't win.

    I never said weight lifting was the same calorie burn as sitting on the couch; I said it's minimal (100-200 calories, which was confirmed by the spreadsheet), that 'lightly active' tdee calculators usually estimate 300-400 calories/day of exercise which is 2-3x what you burn during weightlifting, and if weight loss is the goal then giving yourself the buffer doesn't hurt.
  • MzManiak
    MzManiak Posts: 1,361 Member
    I do. I tried to maintain my weight without calculating it... and was consistently losing weight every week, even when I went over my calories. I have to eat about 100 calories more per day than what the calculators say to maintain my weight if I don't count it... I'd say it's important for me. (Which goes along with what my Fitbit says- that I burn 72 calories during a 30 minute weight lifting session)

    The rate and intensity with which you lift affects the burn count though. As does your general life style.

    Try it one way. If it works for you, cool. If not, tweak the numbers until you get them right.
  • DaddieCat
    DaddieCat Posts: 3,643 Member
    I don't know where some of these numbers come from, but I use a heart rate monitor to track caloric burn throughout my various activities and doing a standard 10-rep 3 set lifting workout at the gym I burn roughly one thousand calories. Some days it's under at 950... some over at 1100-1200... my heart rate monitor is a polar f7 and I calibrate it often.

    Just sayin'
  • markymarkchitown
    markymarkchitown Posts: 5
    MFP grossly understates the calorie expenditure that resistance training adds. There is much out there on EPOC (Excess Post Excercise Oxygen Consumption) I.e., afterburn effect. The long and the short of it is that the more oxygen you consume, the more calories you are burning (this is corresponding, not causal). All the articles about studies done on this have shown that shorter periods of higher intensity work versus longer periods of lesser intensity work gives you a greater EPOC. So when you are huffing and puffing after that minute of intense lifting, you are going to burn more after the workout than had you stayed active during the entire time by jogging. It's true the jogger would have burned more DURING the actual exercise time, but the lifter (according to most literature) will burn more in aggregate by the end of the day due to the higher EPOC.

    Of course there are so many vairables, like how hard you are lifting; but in general the literature agrees that lifting gives a greater effect after the workout as opposed to during the workout.
  • hananah89
    hananah89 Posts: 692 Member
    I was tracking my lifting with my cardio but wasn't losing (after close to a month) so I recalculated with only my 3 days of cardio. If I'm still hungry at the end of the day (read: SL day) then I'll eat and not worry about going 1-200 cals over.
  • BigGuy47
    BigGuy47 Posts: 1,768 Member
    ... 'lightly active' tdee calculators usually estimate 300-400 calories/day of exercise which is 2-3x what you burn during weightlifting
    What about the calories you burn for muscle repair in the 24 - 48 hours after lifting? All of your calculations seem to be centered around calories burned "during" the activity.

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