BMR Help

BMR has nothing to do with exercise. Go to the tools tab and click on the BMR tab under it. Find out your personal BMR. These are the calories/day that your body burns from you doing absolutely nothing. Like if you were laying down in a coma not moving at all. Now, the calories you burn from daily activities, such as just getting up from a sitting position, laughing, walking to the restroom,etc. are a little harder to keep track of. I believe MFP estimates that we burn about 500 cals/day doing these things (you can see this number when you update you goals. It shows how many cals per day you are burning which is BMR+daily activity cals). Then if you exercise you add this number to yur BMR and daily activity cal. That would be the total cals you burn in a day. Without a HRM it is difficult to give an accurate #. They are all just estimates. Hope this helps!

oh wow it just hit me...
so when you hear burn more than you consume they mean your bmr+exercise!? geez i feel blond! i apologize and am now embarrassed haha..but it just never clicked..i kept thinking how in the heck can you burn more than you eat if a single exercise is less than 600 cals burned and you of course have to eat more than that! gee, thanks for the lightbulb!

close,

it's BMR + daily activity calories + exercise = total calories burned for a day.

For most people BMR is between 50 and 70% of their maintenance calories, but it's very individual.

FYI
Basal Metabolic Rate is the calories you burn to sustain basic life processes such as respiration, heart beat, renal function, and blood circulation. It also includes the calories required to remain in a waking state (which is why the coma reference is not quite accurate, the conscious brain actual consumes vast amounts of calories). BMR does NOT include the thermic effect of food (it takes energy to digest food), the effects of skeletal muscle use (exercise or activity of any kind), and thermo-regulation (keeping your body at a constant temperature requires energy).

thanks for clearing that up!
so to really know my output (not just in exercise) it would help to have a hrm huh?

that would be more accurate than any standard calculation yes, but it's still an estimate (just a more accurate one) because it's indirect measurement based on other averages and the HRM's built in EEG.

More accurate would be having an indirect calorimetry test done at a MET lab, that is (another) estimate, but even more accurate because they measure oxygen inhalation and exhalation. Because most energy usage in the body is aerobic (during sub-maximal activity periods), and we know how many calories burn with a given volume of oxygen, we can calculate how many calories you burn given a specific time period by measuring how much oxygen you breath in and out. BUT there are still slight variations with that as some processes can be anaerobic (I.E. lactate and anaerobic cellular respiration). Of course the most accurate way is a direct calorimetry chamber or suit but those tests are expensive and not widely offered.

Steve, now you've really muddied the waters......nice to see ya!

My work here is done!