Weight Lifting...why so few calories?
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I'm doing a combination cardio/weight training to lose weight and get my body back to what it was. I just find that when i go enter in my activities and am proud of what i have accomplished and it says i have hardly burned anything off it is a bit frustrating. Climbing stairs should not be burning more calories than doing chin ups or leg presses, and sitting doing desk work should not burn more than squats...end rant.
If you want to show off your accomplishments (which is fine) there's nothing wrong with posting things weights and reps, and new maxes and such.
Yes, i like to see my progress. My trainer keeps a log of it, but I dont have a copy yet so this is how i try to remember what i am doing and how i have progressed.0 -
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.0 -
I use A HRM for everything weightlifting ,cardio body pump, body attack and cx worx what i burn is what i burn and eat accordingly0
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If you have a team of masons, but no bricks, no work gets done on building that house.
Love this...hahaha!
Hmm...i wonder then on the days that i do weight training if i should be eating more calories then...0 -
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.
love this!0 -
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.0 -
Heart rate monitors do not accurate produce burned calories from weight lifting. Heart rate monitors monitor heart rate. The monitors convert heart rate to calories burned using specific equations. These equations are only valid for continuous steady state cardio vascular activities. They are not valid for weight lifting or even HIIT. Furthermore, having a high heart rate alone does not burn calories. For example if you are sitting on your butt watching a scary movie you might have a high heart rate but you certainly aren't burning any more calories than you would be if you were watching something boring. It's the actual activity that burns the calories. The activity also raises your heart rate. So in some circumstances high heart rate can be correlated with calories burned but not in all of them. When you lift weights your heart rate remains high during your rests even if you are sitting on your butt. The heart rate monitor doesn't know you are sitting on your butt and still thinks you are moving enough to produce that heart rater so the calories burned it produces will be inaccurate.0
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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.0 -
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.
Your profile picture is cracking me up, mayfrayy. Freaking hilarious. :laugh:0 -
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.0 -
Heart rate monitors do not accurate produce burned calories from weight lifting. Heart rate monitors monitor heart rate. The monitors convert heart rate to calories burned using specific equations. These equations are only valid for continuous steady state cardio vascular activities. They are not valid for weight lifting or even HIIT. Furthermore, having a high heart rate alone does not burn calories. For example if you are sitting on your butt watching a scary movie you might have a high heart rate but you certainly aren't burning any more calories than you would be if you were watching something boring. It's the actual activity that burns the calories. The activity also raises your heart rate. So in some circumstances high heart rate can be correlated with calories burned but not in all of them. When you lift weights your heart rate remains high during your rests even if you are sitting on your butt. The heart rate monitor doesn't know you are sitting on your butt and still thinks you are moving enough to produce that heart rater so the calories burned it produces will be inaccurate.
This is not true. Calories burned are a direct correlation of your heart rate. So in your example of a scary movie raising your heart rate, you actually WOULD burn more calories then watching say a documentary that kept your heart rate lower. We are splitting hairs however as the difference between the two would be very minimal. Your calorie burn is related to oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhaust. The faster your heart beats, the faster that process occurs therefore increasing your calorie burn.0 -
lol at people thinking weightlifting burns a lot of calories.
LOL at people who think it doesn't.
If you are lifting at or near maximum ability, using short rest times, etc., then not only are you burning calories at a furious rate, you are also creating a ton of "afterburn" work for your body to do in repairing that microdamage to your muscles.
Remember that "calories burned" is simply another way to say "work performed" - Calories is just the way we measure that work. Do you seriously believe that lifting heavy weights doesn't count as "work" and doesn't require tremendous expenditures of energy?
If you think that an intense weight-lifting session doesn't burn a lot of calories, then you simply don't understand the concept.0 -
This is not true. Calories burned are a direct correlation of your heart rate. So in your example of a scary movie raising your heart rate, you actually WOULD burn more calories then watching say a documentary that kept your heart rate lower. We are splitting hairs however as the difference between the two would be very minimal. Your calorie burn is related to oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhaust. The faster your heart beats, the faster that process occurs therefore increasing your calorie burn.
Actually you are completely incorrect. Calories burned is a direct correlation to the amount of work (using the word in its scientific meaning) being performed by your muscles. *BY DEFINITION*
Heart rate monitors can approximate that amount for steady state cardio. However, even the manufacturers of HRMs will tell you that they are wildly inaccurate in calorie counting for interval activities like HIIT or weight lifting. Trying to use an HRM to estimate calories burned for anything OTHER than steady state cardio (which is all they were and are designed to be used for) is a fool's game.0 -
This is not true. Calories burned are a direct correlation of your heart rate. So in your example of a scary movie raising your heart rate, you actually WOULD burn more calories then watching say a documentary that kept your heart rate lower. We are splitting hairs however as the difference between the two would be very minimal. Your calorie burn is related to oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhaust. The faster your heart beats, the faster that process occurs therefore increasing your calorie burn.
Actually you are completely incorrect. Calories burned is a direct correlation to the amount of work (using the word in its scientific meaning) being performed by your muscles. *BY DEFINITION*
Heart rate monitors can approximate that amount for steady state cardio. However, even the manufacturers of HRMs will tell you that they are wildly inaccurate for interval activities like HIIT or weight lifting. Trying to use an HRM to estimate calories burned for anything OTHER than steady state cardio is a fool's game.
I don't really like to get into back and forth on here, but no.
Caloric expenditure occurs when you inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
So to estimate how many calories you burn you have to know how much oxygen you go through. Oxygen intake is loosely (and that is the part I agree with you on with HRMs not being exact) correlate with heart rate, so if you can monitor your heart rate, you are essentially monitoring oxygen intake/usage. VO2Max is something most HRMs take into consideration which measures how many milliliters of oxygen per minutes your body is taking in and transferring into the blood. So by tracking your Heart Rate, it can loosely track your VO2Max which is why you can track calorie expenditure watching that horror film regardless if you are sitting around or doing squats. Clearly doing the squats will increase your oxygen intake, therefore raising your heart rate and burning more calories.0 -
This is not true. Calories burned are a direct correlation of your heart rate. So in your example of a scary movie raising your heart rate, you actually WOULD burn more calories then watching say a documentary that kept your heart rate lower. We are splitting hairs however as the difference between the two would be very minimal. Your calorie burn is related to oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhaust. The faster your heart beats, the faster that process occurs therefore increasing your calorie burn.
Actually you are completely incorrect. Calories burned is a direct correlation to the amount of work (using the word in its scientific meaning) being performed by your muscles. *BY DEFINITION*
Heart rate monitors can approximate that amount for steady state cardio. However, even the manufacturers of HRMs will tell you that they are wildly inaccurate for interval activities like HIIT or weight lifting. Trying to use an HRM to estimate calories burned for anything OTHER than steady state cardio is a fool's game.
I don't really like to get into back and forth on here, but no.
Caloric expenditure occurs when you inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
So to estimate how many calories you burn you have to know how much oxygen you go through. Oxygen intake is loosely (and that is the part I agree with you on with HRMs not being exact) correlate with heart rate, so if you can monitor your heart rate, you are essentially monitoring oxygen intake/usage. VO2Max is something most HRMs take into consideration which measures how many milliliters of oxygen per minutes your body is taking in and transferring into the blood. So by tracking your Heart Rate, it can loosely track your VO2Max which is why you can track calorie expenditure watching that horror film regardless if you are sitting around or doing squats. Clearly doing the squats will increase your oxygen intake, therefore raising your heart rate and burning more calories.
I'm willing to learn so if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
However it makes more sense that burning calories (energy) occurs by doing work as the previous poster explained it, by the activity itself. Sure, I've heard of VO2Max and was under the impression that it was just the most accurate way to monitor the burned calories as the amount of burned calories directly corresponds to the amount of oxygen and carbon monoxide measured. It just doesn't make any sense to me that simply converting oxygen to carbon monoxide is the actual mechanism that burns the calories.
I'd very much appreciate any good articles you can provide on the subject.0 -
This is not true. Calories burned are a direct correlation of your heart rate. So in your example of a scary movie raising your heart rate, you actually WOULD burn more calories then watching say a documentary that kept your heart rate lower. We are splitting hairs however as the difference between the two would be very minimal. Your calorie burn is related to oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhaust. The faster your heart beats, the faster that process occurs therefore increasing your calorie burn.
Actually you are completely incorrect. Calories burned is a direct correlation to the amount of work (using the word in its scientific meaning) being performed by your muscles. *BY DEFINITION*
Heart rate monitors can approximate that amount for steady state cardio. However, even the manufacturers of HRMs will tell you that they are wildly inaccurate for interval activities like HIIT or weight lifting. Trying to use an HRM to estimate calories burned for anything OTHER than steady state cardio is a fool's game.
I don't really like to get into back and forth on here, but no.
Caloric expenditure occurs when you inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
So to estimate how many calories you burn you have to know how much oxygen you go through. Oxygen intake is loosely (and that is the part I agree with you on with HRMs not being exact) correlate with heart rate, so if you can monitor your heart rate, you are essentially monitoring oxygen intake/usage. VO2Max is something most HRMs take into consideration which measures how many milliliters of oxygen per minutes your body is taking in and transferring into the blood. So by tracking your Heart Rate, it can loosely track your VO2Max which is why you can track calorie expenditure watching that horror film regardless if you are sitting around or doing squats. Clearly doing the squats will increase your oxygen intake, therefore raising your heart rate and burning more calories.
so if you're holding your breath you can't burn calories?0 -
I don't really like to get into back and forth on here, but no.
Caloric expenditure occurs when you inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
Actually, you're wrong. Calorie expenditure occurs when work is performed. Period. The breathing process can approximate that for steady state cardio, but one does not depend on the other. To prove it to you: Hold your breath and walk three steps. You burned calories taking those three steps, but you didn't breathe. If your proposition were true, simply breathing in and out over and over again would burn calories while holding your breath and exercising wouldn't. That obviously is a ludicrous proposition on its face.So to estimate how many calories you burn you have to know how much oxygen you go through. Oxygen intake is loosely (and that is the part I agree with you on with HRMs not being exact) correlate with heart rate, so if you can monitor your heart rate, you are essentially monitoring oxygen intake/usage. VO2Max is something most HRMs take into consideration which measures how many milliliters of oxygen per minutes your body is taking in and transferring into the blood. So by tracking your Heart Rate, it can loosely track your VO2Max which is why you can track calorie expenditure watching that horror film regardless if you are sitting around or doing squats. Clearly doing the squats will increase your oxygen intake, therefore raising your heart rate and burning more calories.
If it were that simple, then researchers wouldn't still be stumped as to how to accurately track calories burned while weight lifting. They could simply slip a mask on an athlete while they were exercising, monitor VO2 throughout the workout and Voila! they'd know exactly how many calories were burned.
That clearly isn't the case since the top researchers in the field will tell you that: a) that doesn't work, and b) they still don't have a way to accurately measure calorie burn during weightlifting. I would presume that you don't claim greater knowledge than people holding doctorates who have spent their lives dedicated to figuring this out, right?0 -
This is not true. Calories burned are a direct correlation of your heart rate. So in your example of a scary movie raising your heart rate, you actually WOULD burn more calories then watching say a documentary that kept your heart rate lower. We are splitting hairs however as the difference between the two would be very minimal. Your calorie burn is related to oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhaust. The faster your heart beats, the faster that process occurs therefore increasing your calorie burn.
Actually you are completely incorrect. Calories burned is a direct correlation to the amount of work (using the word in its scientific meaning) being performed by your muscles. *BY DEFINITION*
Heart rate monitors can approximate that amount for steady state cardio. However, even the manufacturers of HRMs will tell you that they are wildly inaccurate for interval activities like HIIT or weight lifting. Trying to use an HRM to estimate calories burned for anything OTHER than steady state cardio is a fool's game.
I don't really like to get into back and forth on here, but no.
Caloric expenditure occurs when you inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
So to estimate how many calories you burn you have to know how much oxygen you go through. Oxygen intake is loosely (and that is the part I agree with you on with HRMs not being exact) correlate with heart rate, so if you can monitor your heart rate, you are essentially monitoring oxygen intake/usage. VO2Max is something most HRMs take into consideration which measures how many milliliters of oxygen per minutes your body is taking in and transferring into the blood. So by tracking your Heart Rate, it can loosely track your VO2Max which is why you can track calorie expenditure watching that horror film regardless if you are sitting around or doing squats. Clearly doing the squats will increase your oxygen intake, therefore raising your heart rate and burning more calories.
Oxygen uptake and breathing are not the same thing.
And while doing squats does increase heart rate, it does not increase oxygen uptake to the same degree that increasing heart rate via an activity like running does.
Heart rate is closely related to oxygen uptake only under limited circumstances--steady-state aerobic activity. In all other conditions, heart rate (and thus HRMs) are not reliable indicators.
The research shows this. Clearly.0 -
post deleted out of failure to communicate in words the ramblings happening in my head. carry on0
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This is not true. Calories burned are a direct correlation of your heart rate. So in your example of a scary movie raising your heart rate, you actually WOULD burn more calories then watching say a documentary that kept your heart rate lower. We are splitting hairs however as the difference between the two would be very minimal. Your calorie burn is related to oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhaust. The faster your heart beats, the faster that process occurs therefore increasing your calorie burn.
Actually you are completely incorrect. Calories burned is a direct correlation to the amount of work (using the word in its scientific meaning) being performed by your muscles. *BY DEFINITION*
Heart rate monitors can approximate that amount for steady state cardio. However, even the manufacturers of HRMs will tell you that they are wildly inaccurate for interval activities like HIIT or weight lifting. Trying to use an HRM to estimate calories burned for anything OTHER than steady state cardio is a fool's game.
I don't really like to get into back and forth on here, but no.
Caloric expenditure occurs when you inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
So to estimate how many calories you burn you have to know how much oxygen you go through. Oxygen intake is loosely (and that is the part I agree with you on with HRMs not being exact) correlate with heart rate, so if you can monitor your heart rate, you are essentially monitoring oxygen intake/usage. VO2Max is something most HRMs take into consideration which measures how many milliliters of oxygen per minutes your body is taking in and transferring into the blood. So by tracking your Heart Rate, it can loosely track your VO2Max which is why you can track calorie expenditure watching that horror film regardless if you are sitting around or doing squats. Clearly doing the squats will increase your oxygen intake, therefore raising your heart rate and burning more calories.
so if you're holding your breath you can't burn calories?
Assuming you were able to hold your breath forever? yes that would be true...but you would eventually release your breath...if you didn't, you would be dead and there would be no calorie burn as there would no longer be oxygen exchange.
Several replies have occurred while I was at lunch and again, I'm not here to debate.
If you don't believe me, read up on it. I never said I'm smarter than scientists who hold doctorates. As a matter of fact, the places I learned this from were those scientists.
The bottom line is that higher heart rate will burn more calories. Don't believe me? take 2 people running at the same speed for the same distance. Both are the same sex, height and weight but one is extremely out of shape while the other is a marathon runner. Because the runner is conditioned and able to run at that output with less effort, he takes in less oxygen, produces less carbon dioxide and therefore has a lower heart rate burning less calories than the out of shape person who is sucking wind and has a very high heart rate.
In a way, some of the things we are saying are very similar, but the fact you mention no scientist is able to identify calorie burn while lifting is silly to me. Is it easier to track constant state cardio? absolutely....is it impossible to track weight lifting calorie burn? not at all0
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