Question about Calories Burned
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ladymissdana
Posts: 8 Member
Hi
Am new to the group but not to cycling I have been a road cyclist for over 10 years.
I started using MFP this year, well because I got lazy and had to. I ride close to 100Km a week or more. And its not unusual for me to ride anywhere from 90min to 4 hours in a trip. MFP says that for a 90 minute ride at even 14 to 16Mph you burn something like 1200+ calories? But my bike is really efficient, high performance and I can at time clock up to 25 or more but i don't feel like I am really exerting myself. Yes I am working hard and putting in the distance but can this be right?
I am asking because I want to be sure I am 1. eating enough to fuel and sustain my cycling especially as I increase over the summer months and 2. so I don't waste all my hard work, eat back everything I burn and gain weight or become lethargic on my bike.
Anyone?
Am new to the group but not to cycling I have been a road cyclist for over 10 years.
I started using MFP this year, well because I got lazy and had to. I ride close to 100Km a week or more. And its not unusual for me to ride anywhere from 90min to 4 hours in a trip. MFP says that for a 90 minute ride at even 14 to 16Mph you burn something like 1200+ calories? But my bike is really efficient, high performance and I can at time clock up to 25 or more but i don't feel like I am really exerting myself. Yes I am working hard and putting in the distance but can this be right?
I am asking because I want to be sure I am 1. eating enough to fuel and sustain my cycling especially as I increase over the summer months and 2. so I don't waste all my hard work, eat back everything I burn and gain weight or become lethargic on my bike.
Anyone?
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Replies
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I wear a HRM when I ride to calculate calories burned. Usually I can cut in half and sometimes even a third of what MFP says the burn is and what the actual burn is. For a 90 minute ride at that speed I would burn under 500 calories.0
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i'll put it simply - MFP's figures for cycling are crap! Don't believe them, or, if you are going for an "eat back" strategy, divide the figure by 3 at the point of entry.
Better yet, buy a Garmin 500/510 and HR monitor, upload the rides to Strava, and use the calorie burn from there.0 -
I use my Polar FT7 HRM for estimating calorie burns.
It's not very sophisticated and doesn't have a VO2 max setting but numbers have been consistent enough to use the MFP eat back exercise calories method.
Runkeeper estimates aren't too far away but always higher. Runkeeper doesn't "know" that I ride a hybrid so that's a very generic calculation.
MFP's 800/hour for a moderate ride isn't credible IMHO.
For this not very aerodynamic but fairly fit bloke on a hybrid flat out for an hour to exhaustion might see 800/hour.
Moderate rides I would expect to see about 600/hour.
Whether these are accurate is anybody's guess!0 -
Another vote for the Gamin 500/510.
:bigsmile:0 -
i'll put it simply - MFP's figures for cycling are crap! Don't believe them, or, if you are going for an "eat back" strategy, divide the figure by 3 at the point of entry.
Better yet, buy a Garmin 500/510 and HR monitor, upload the rides to Strava, and use the calorie burn from there.
I have found that even Strava has higher numbers than my Garmin (910xt). MFP's cycling numbers are really, really high.0 -
I just did an easy ride of 40 miles and 2.5 hrs. MFP says 2360 calories and my Garmin 810 says 1156.
I'm running a Quarq PM and I know what my details are so I'm confident the Garmin numbers are pretty accurate. If I DL the raw data to Garmin Connect, Strava and WKO+ they are all pretty close but will vary a little. That is due to software differences from manufacturer to manufacturer but nowhere close to the differences you see in MFP.
WKO won't even give you a calorie burn without PM input. I'm going to say that anything you get for calorie burn not getting input from several metrics (think power, HR, weight, V02 and time) is somewhat a WAG.
With that said I don't really worry / watch calories too much. I know where I am and with a little tweak here and there can get to where I want in 30 days. Your body is the perfect mathematician. Too little you lose, too much you gain, too much too fast while training and you get sick.0 -
For mountain biking I've found the numbers from my Polar FT4 and MFP are pretty close.
I just got the Edge 500 and the heart rate strap. Is the calorie burn from that based off distance or heart rate?0 -
For mountain biking I've found the numbers from my Polar FT4 and MFP are pretty close.
I just got the Edge 500 and the heart rate strap. Is the calorie burn from that based off distance or heart rate?
Heart rate0 -
i'll put it simply - MFP's figures for cycling are crap! Don't believe them, or, if you are going for an "eat back" strategy, divide the figure by 3 at the point of entry.
Better yet, buy a Garmin 500/510 and HR monitor, upload the rides to Strava, and use the calorie burn from there.
I echo TBY's comments. The MFP cycling figures are useless. I use an HRM linked to my Garmin 800. The figures when uploaded to Strava are closer to reality but I find that for me the figures are still higher than my Garmin figures, so I use Garmin, As I "eat back".
As a rule of thumb, if I am out on a ride and push myself I average 450-550 per hour. If it is a recovery ride the burn is less.0 -
Just for amusement thought I would try a variety of calorie estimates for today's ride.
36 miles @ average of 16.45mph in 2hrs 11mins on my hybrid (none of the estimators know the kind of bike I ride BTW).
Fairly flat course (Strava says 591ft of elevation, Runkeeper gives total climb of 963ft)
I'm 5'9" and 164lbs.
Fairly fit for an old fella, good VO2 max and low pulse (none of the estimators know that either)
I would describe this as a fairly fast ride for me - average heartbeat 80% of my tested max HR.
Strava (free app) - 1123
Runkeeper (free app) - 1542
Polar FT7 HRM - 1570
MyFitnessPal "vigorous" (14-16mph) - 1624
MyFitnessPal "fast" (16-20mph) - 1949
That's a huge spread but middle three not too far apart.
Usually Runkeeper comes out higher than my HRM. Maybe the pie eating van driver that turned across me at a junction and tried to run me off the road spiked my heart rate a bit?0 -
Has anyone tried out mapmyride? The calories that show up for me on a workout for Mapmyride usually seems about half of what my Garmin 305 records. It appears that there is no real way to see what actual calorie burn is, there is just so much difference with all the ways to count calorie burns. I guess one could get a bunch of different readings like sijomial did, and average them out. I suppose that these different companies use different math formulas to come up with what they feel should be a calorie burn, why else would there be such differences?0
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Someone posted a formula here once that was a good rule of thumb--I think it was weight (in pounds) x distance (in miles) x 0.25....
MFPs numbers and that formula and the FitBit website (which factors in distance and time and weight) are within a few dozen calories of each other for me (sometimes I do bump myself down one speed category to make sure I'm not overestimating), and I eat back most or all of my exercise calories and am losing weight steadily, so it seems to be fairly accurate for me. (Don't have an HRM.)0 -
I often use MapMyRide and the values it gives for burn aren't too far off from MFP's for me. It syncs to MFP so the data MFP is using for my account is from MapMyRide. I don't know if MapMyRide just uses average speed for an entire route or measures the splits. Also don't know if it includes calculations on climbing and decending or not -- even though it has that data available.
I want to get an HRM at least to feed into MapMyRide's calculator so the numbers are hopefully closer to reality. They just seem too high. I don't know for sure though.
Maybe the most reliable way is if you measured power output in watts, so a power sensor probably is the way to go if you are really wanting the best numbers.
In any case though, one nice thing about being heavy and these formulas is that you definitely burn a lot more kcals riding!
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They will be - if they're anywhere near what MFP comes up with, i'd say they're something like twice the actual figure.I want to get an HRM at least to feed into MapMyRide's calculator so the numbers are hopefully closer to reality. They just seem too high. I don't know for sure though.Maybe the most reliable way is if you measured power output in watts, so a power sensor probably is the way to go if you are really wanting the best numbers.
Certainly is. MFP = 1176kCals for todays ride, Strava via Powermeter 638kCals, Garmin 800 which has been "NewLeaf" metabolic profiled to "custom match" the HR Burn to my metabolism = 610kCals.0 -
Get a HR monitor. If I followed MFP for calories burned, I would be shorting myself. I tend to ride at 80-85% max HR which means in one hour, I can burn 1000 calories. If I used some of the MFP listings, calories burned would be down around 600-700 calories....not that those are wrong, but the individual rode at a much lower HR/effort.0
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MyFitnessPal "fast" (16-20mph) - 1949
Based upon MFP above, you burn the same amount of calories for 16 mph as 20 mph..
Huge difference in effort. This number is not valid for both efforts.
Get a HR monitor to determine actual calories burned.0 -
Someone posted a formula here once that was a good rule of thumb--I think it was weight (in pounds) x distance (in miles) x 0.25....
MFPs numbers and that formula and the FitBit website (which factors in distance and time and weight) are within a few dozen calories of each other for me (sometimes I do bump myself down one speed category to make sure I'm not overestimating), and I eat back most or all of my exercise calories and am losing weight steadily, so it seems to be fairly accurate for me. (Don't have an HRM.)
I also use MFP's calculations (don't have a heart rate monitor) and have been eating back all (or more) of my exercise calories and have been losing pretty consistently when I ride. I'll sometimes go up or down an intensity category, depending on the ride and how it felt. Like today for instance, I averaged 12.25mph for 60 min but entered it as '10-12mph' because it felt like easy riding to me. When I rode last week, I averaged 9.5mph over 2 hrs, but still entered it as '10-12mph' because there were a lot of hills I rode up (rather than walk up them) and felt like I was pushing myself. As long as I'm satisfied with the rate at which I'm losing I'll keep doing the same. When the losses slow down too much or stop, then I'll take another look at how I record what I earn and how much I eat back.
Chelle0 -
