How many calories do you really burn?

One is an estimate that the other is calories actually burned. It varies from person to person depending on age, weight and level of intensity.

I take Zumba as well and I work out at an high intense rate and burn about an average of 700 calories an hour. I really do think that you are burning that many calories because for me it's a fun workout and you don't even realizing how hard you are working. If I were to go on a treadmill or any other cardio machine I would be disappointed because I am not burning as many calories and not having fun. I hope that makes sense.

So I have been taking Zumba with a friend of mine, and loving it. It really kicks my butt, and I work at a high intensity (as hard as I can!), and work up a good sweat. My friend (about same size and weight as me), uses a HRM that says she burns 500 to 600 calories for the hour class, but she works at a lower intensity than I do (more low impact).

I don't use a HRM, but when I log my Zumba into MFP (I use "dancing, aerobic, ballet or modern") it gives me about 350 cals burned for the hour. Why is this so different? Is she really burning 600 calories?

This is an ongoing source of frustration for me as I've become quite fixated on calculating calories burned after my workouts. Primarily I use a treadmill with a calorie counter, which at first had been been giving me results that seemed proportionate to my time and effort spent on it and I was pretty happy with that. But then nagging doubt set in because obviously such a machine could only give one an estimate of calories burned. And also, I was seeing all this talk about heart rate determining fat/calorie burn. So I went straight to Google and did me some research.

During my search I read an article that basically suggested it's safe to assume one burns about 15-20% less calories than the calorie counter reports. This I think was based on the fact that since it does measure your pulse but is not strapped to your body it's not the most accurate heart rate monitoring system. So for a few weeks I started subtracting 20% of my total calorie burn from each workout session and going with the lower number.

Then I found a formula on Livestrong (http://www.livestrong.com/article/78365-estimate-calories-burned-heart-rate/) which looked a little scary at first, but actually brought me to the same amount I would get subtracting 20% from that total caloric burn on my treadmill counter -- usually within 10-15 calories each time. And then entering that number on MFP to get their estimate, I saw that the resulting amount varied again by only 10-15 calories each time.

In summary, that formula seems to a foolproof way to most accurately estimate calorie burn, if only because it's based on heart rate. If you have a good heart rate monitor you probably wouldn't even need to use such a formula. But the best heart rate monitor I can afford right now is the Two Fingers on Jugular for Fifteen Seconds and Multiply by Four kind. So there ya go.

Just a suggestion.

I burn about 600-700 in zumba also.