CAL vs. KCAL?

a kcal is 1000 calories.
(kilocalorie.)

Everything you track is in Kcals.
People just commonly say "Cal" instead of "Kcal"

A calorie is the energy needed to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degree C. and is usually refered to only in chemistry class, also it is a very small amount of energy.

A kCal is 1000 of the "scientific" Calories. So when you consume something that says 100 Calories, it is really 100,000 calories or 100kcal. For the purposes of tracking they are the same it is just a shortcut used instead of saying Kcal for everything. Although it would seem impressive to say I burned 1,200,000 Calories working out today.

so would you say i burned 760 cal or 1542 calories? haha, sorry I dont know why Im finding this confusing.

If your HRM says you burned 1542 KCals, you burned 1542 Calories and should log all of them. You don't have to divide anything. They are the same unit of measurement.

Which website are you talking about? The Polar website that syncs with your watch (if you have the accessory that does this?) or the MyFitnessPal website? If you're talking about this website, go with the watch as if you've set it correctly with your details, it's going to be a much closer estimate of actual calories burned during exercise.

Kcal is the same as Cal - we use the terms interchangeably.

What is the difference between CAL and KCAL?

I just recently got a polar heartrate/calorie counter watch and the watch itself says that I only burned 760 cal but when I enter it into their website it is saying 1542 kcal. What is the difference, I am so confused. Also, both settings say LBS/FT instead of KG/CM

PLEASE HELP!

In the US, calories and kcal are used interchangeably, and really mean kcals. Don't worry about that; it's not the issue here.

Instead, it looks like MFP is estimating your burn at 1542, whereas the HRM says 760. My guess is that confirms the idea of many that MFP often estimates really high, and ignore it and use the HRM numbers.

However, first do a reality check. What are you doing? How long? Is it something a HRM can deal with well (steady state cardio)? Is it a monitor with a strap?

My reaction, though, is that the HRM number seems much more realistic. For me that number would be running 7 miles or working hard at some other kind of cardio for 75 to 90 mins. The other would be like a three hour bike ride or so or a 14 mile run.

The Difference between calorie, Calorie, and kilocalorie
A calorie is a unit of energy. We tend to associate calories with food, but they apply to anything containing energy. For example, a gallon (about 4 liters) of gasoline contains about 31,000,000 calories. Specifically, a calorie is the amount of energy, or heat, it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). One calorie is equal to 4.184 joules, a common unit of energy used in the physical sciences. Most of us think of calories in relation to food, as in "This can of soda has 200 Calories." It turns out that the Calories on a food package are actually kilocalories (1000 calories = 1 kilocalorie). The word is sometimes capitalized to show the difference, but usually not. A food Calorie contains 4,840 joules. A can of soda containing 200 Calories contains 200,000 calories, or 200 kilocalories. A gallon of gasoline contains 31,000 Calories. The same applies to exercise -- when a fitness chart says you burn about 100 Calories for every mile you jog, it means 100 kilocalories. 1 g

Carbohydrates = 4 Calories
1 g Protein = 4 Calories
1 g Fat = 9 Calories

Human beings need energy to survive -- to breathe, move, pump blood -- and they acquire this energy from food. The number of calories in a food is a measure of how much potential energy that food possesses. A gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, a gram of protein also has 4 calories, and a gram of fat has 9 calories. Foods are a compilation of these three building blocks. So if you know how many carbohydrates, fats and proteins are in any given food, you know how many calories, or how much energy, that food contains. If we look at the nutritional label on the back of a packet of maple and brown sugar oatmeal, we find that it has 160 calories. This means that if we were to pour this oatmeal into a dish, set the oatmeal on fire and get it to burn completely, the reaction would produce 160 kilocalories (remember: food calories are kilocalories) -- enough energy to raise the temperature of 160 kilograms of water by 1 degree Celsius. If we look closer at the nutritional label, we see that our oatmeal has 2 grams of fat, 4 grams of protein and 32 grams of carbohydrates, producing a total of 162 calories (apparently, food manufacturers like to round down). Of these 162 calories, 18 come from fat (9 cal x 2 g), 16 come from protein (4 cal x 4 g) and 128 come from carbohydrates (4 cal x 32 g).
Our bodies "burn" the calories in the oatmeal through metabolic processes, by which enzymes break the carbohydrates into glucose and other sugars, the fats into glycerol and fatty acids and the proteins into amino acids. These molecules are then transported through the bloodstream to the cells, where they are either absorbed for immediate use or sent on to the final stage of metabolism in which they are reacted with oxygen to release their stored energy.

Claysmommy08 wrote: »

so would you say i burned 760 cal or 1542 calories? haha, sorry I dont know why Im finding this confusing.

this particular problem might have zero to do with KCal vs. Cal...the fact that one of those numbers is almost exactly double the other would seem to indicate that it might've somehow been double-logged by crosstalk between apps, depending on how you have things synchronized.