Weight Lifting...why so few calories?

weight lifting doesn't burn all that many calories...it is really not the purpose of resistance training. You do resistance training so that you look awesome when you've shed the fat...it is a long term investment in your overall body composition (among other things).

I would add to that, your exercise in general should be done for the purpose of fitness, not how many calories you burn. You don't have to burn any calories through exercise...weight control is largely about energy balance and eating appropriate quantities of food to support your activity level...so the more active you are, the more calories are required to maintain your weight...so suffice it to say that if you exercise regularly you can lose weight at a higher calorie goal.

Exercise for fitness; diet for weight control.

By lifting weights you are building muscle which will help you burn fat. Also, the weight lifting will help assure that most of the weight you lose will be fat and not muscle. There are ways you can make weight training burn more calories but if your already doing a lot of cardio I wouldn't worry about it. Just keep training and has your ability to lift heavier weights and or do more reps, you will use more calories. Do alot of traditional free weight exercises and every month or so switch your rooutine around a little. I gurantee you will be happy with your results.

weight lifting doesn't burn all that many calories...it is really not the purpose of resistance training. You do resistance training so that you look awesome when you've shed the fat...it is a long term investment in your overall body composition (among other things).

This.

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the game that is MFP. Burning calories becomes like earning points in a video game. But you've got to take a step back and realize that the end goal is not to win the MFP game but to actual improve your health and you appearance. Weight lifting does that even if it doesn't contribute much to the game.

weight lifting doesn't burn all that many calories...it is really not the purpose of resistance training. You do resistance training so that you look awesome when you've shed the fat...it is a long term investment in your overall body composition (among other things).

This.

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the game that is MFP. Burning calories becomes like earning points in a video game. But you've got to take a step back and realize that the end goal is not to win the MFP game but to actual improve your health and you appearance. Weight lifting does that even if it doesn't contribute much to the game.

+1

weight lifting doesn't burn all that many calories...it is really not the purpose of resistance training. You do resistance training so that you look awesome when you've shed the fat...it is a long term investment in your overall body composition (among other things).

This.

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the game that is MFP. Burning calories becomes like earning points in a video game. But you've got to take a step back and realize that the end goal is not to win the MFP game but to actual improve your health and you appearance. Weight lifting does that even if it doesn't contribute much to the game.

i couldnt love this statement more - this is seriously going on my fridge door!!!

I don't know the exact calorie burn for weight lifting and the experts argue about it all the time. I do know that the person who said 400 reps = 100 calories is very likely wrong.

That said, the studies show lifting weights alone will cause you to lose more weight than just doing cardio or more than just doing interval training. That is, for the exercise portion you are better with weights than the others (only taking weight loss into account). I dropped 60 pounds in 4 months, of course on a calorie deficit (the main reason), but the primary exercise I do is weights. I only do 20 minutes of cardio two to three times a week and do weights four times a week for about an hour to and hour and fifteen minutes each day.

My wife has been trying to lose weight off and on for the last ten years and usually got frustrated after 6 or 7 months. She is doing weights with me now and has lost more weight than any other past attempt and she looks so much better than she has after other diet/exercise routines.

Calories expended is calculated based on heart rate and lifting weights doesn't raise your heart rate that much. Unfortunately I have to tell you that you are not burning 173 calories in 15 minutes on an elliptical. I use a Polar heart rate monitor and it consistently shows about 50% of the calories burned that equipment like elliptical trainers does.
MFP's estimates are off too

lol at people thinking weightlifting burns a lot of calories.

With cardio, the calories burned are the actual calories used during the cardio session. In other words, the energy needed to move your body through whatever it is that you're doing.

With weight lifting the actual energy expenditure during the activity is very small, so you get a lower calorie burn. The benefits from weight lifting come when you're asleep, when your body has to repair, and replenish the glycogen in your muscles. (this is why sleep is an underrated part of any fitness program) This also takes calories but it's a wild guess as to how much, and depends on the person. Which is why it's hard to calculate.

You'll just have to experiment and see what works for you.

Lifting uses a lot more calories than cardio. Add a barbell to the numbers below, and it's kinda ridiculous how underestimated lifting is.

http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2014/01/do-we-systematically-underestimate.html

For Mr. Average Joe with a body weight of 80kg, this would mean that his 30 minutes body weight workout doesn't consume 288kcal, but 576kcal and thus way more than 30min of jogging, which should cost him ~400kcal.

Bottom line: I guess I don't have to tell you that these results are very important. Not for you, obviously, because you as a SuppVersity reader know about the fallacy of working out to burn energy, but for all those Average Joes and specifically Janes out there who still believe that you'd lose weight by simply burning all the junk you eat off in the gym.

Cardio "addicts" would yet not be the only ones for whom these results - if they turn out to be substantial - would have huge consequences. The average "expert" on the panels we owe the wise dietary and exercise guidelines to, would probably also have to revise his opinion on the primary of "cardio" exercise for its "superior ability to help shed weight"... unfortunately, my gut tells me that I am the only one who even noticed the (future) publication of this paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning.

I suggest finding out your TDEE, and adjusting your daily total intake off that. If you want to log your cardio exercises, and get comments from friends, just put them as 1 calorie burned.

lol at people thinking weightlifting burns a lot of calories.

If it makes you feel good to make fun of those that are just learning, then you have issues.

to those who actually helped answer my question and offered some advise and took the time to explain to me, i truly appreciate it...but to you sir, go blow a goat.

I wasn't even talking about those just learning, i'm loling at people who thing weightlifting burns a lot of calories [because of perceived effort].

But really, I don't care, I laugh at most people on this site for thinking weight loss is rocket science.

Quite frankly, it's because calorie tracking for weight lifting boils down to guesswork.

Even the best researchers in the field haven't been able to figure out an accurate way to measure exactly how many calories weightlifing burns.

Steady state cardio is the easiest to measure/predict as there is a steady output of energy over a set period of time. That's why those numbers are fairly reliable overall.

However, weight lifting involves a whole lot of variables: how much weight you're lifting, how long you're resting, the current strength of your muscles in relation to that weight, which muscles specifically are being used, are you lifting with explosive or slow movements, are you concentrating on slow eccentric movements, etc.

Not only that, but the goal of resistance training is to create microtears in your muscle tissue which the body repairs/rebuilds to make stronger. That takes a lot of work by the body over an extended period of time which you can't possibly reflect by a set number. Did you work out hard enough to create the microtears? How extensive were they? etc. This isn't true of doing steady state cardio.

So basically, by putting in a calorie count in for your weightlifing, you're giving yourself "some" credit for having exercised. But it's pretty much just a placeholder. You may have burned significantly more or significantly less and you may burn even more in the days following that workout as your body recovers. But there's no way to put a single number on your weight lifting workout and expect any real degree of accuracy.