Do you subtract calories from weight lifting?
leecha2014
Posts: 385 Member
Hey everyone! How do you track weight lifting? I spend 30 min 3-4 x per week, I'm not sure how many calories I'm burning and if I should subract it from my daily total? Thx
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I was going to ask the same question. I'm not quite sure what to do either.0
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I'm hoping the answer is yes!0
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If you're talking traditional weightlifting (i.e., do a set for a minute or so, recover for three minutes or so, repeat), just log it under cardio as weightlifting (and you can track your sets and reps under strength training). If it's something more continuous (light weights, high reps, minimal recovery time in between), then it'd would be logged as circuit training.
FWIW, traditional weightlifting doesn't net out as a lot of calories...not much being burned during the recovery time.0 -
You'd have to wear a HRM to get a picture of calorie burn.0
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awarreningermany wrote: »I am not sure about this either. I do supersets with little rest and lots of full body moves and I usually do it 3 times a week for well over an hour but am often told I should not log it at all or my hiit training. This means for me that I cant log or get credit for any calories cause there is no way to know how many i burnt to begin with. It is kind of depressing to train as hard as I do (I also do hiit, liss, and trx work etc on the non gym days) and not get to have credit at all for those workouts but if I guess and I guess wrong and eat some, I could throw off my weight loss. Totally not fair!
Just use the MFP estimates - they are as good as anything else.
"but if I guess and I guess wrong and eat some, I could throw off my weight loss"
No not really - you would have to get it massively and consistently wrong for it to have a significant impact. If your weight loss results over time don't match expectations you simply adjust. If you estimate you have a chance of being close enough - not recording at all guarantees you are wrong!0 -
The issue is the calorie burning at that time isn't that high for weight training (and any calories burned would be picked up by a HRM) but the real calorie burn comes after weight training due to the metabolism being lifted and staying elevated for a longer period than after straight cardio. Also, as you lose fat and gain muscle, while your weight may remain the same, the increased muscle means that your basal meta rate will increase also.
All of these things are very difficult to calculate at any general level eg you weigh 60kg and did 3 sets of 40 kg squats, 10 reps per set. Depending on the proportion of muscle to fat that makes up the 60kg you weigh, you cannot attach a generic calorie burn to a)the activity itself or b) the 'afterburn' from the raised metabolism.
Best guess re including calorie burn is to use that which comes under cardio and know you have a few extra burned calories hanging around in the background! Trust me though, it's been annoying me too!0 -
The 8 or 9 extra calories from afterburn really aren't going to make much of a difference. EPOC is insignificant; 6-8% for anaerobic and 4-5% for aerobic activities.
Anyway, to return to the original point, there seem to be two questions;
Should one eat back calories expended? The answer is yes, that's how MFP is designed. Notwithstanding that the scope for errors is quite high around both intake and expenditure, so some people advocate not eating them back, or only eating a proportion back.
The second question becomes, what's the most appropriate way to estimate calories expended for these types of workouts. The answer is, every method of estimating calories has the potential for quite significant errors, either up or down. with that in mind, just pick the lowest cost - As upthread, for traditional resistance training, log it as weight training under CV, and for higher paced, then circuit training.
The key point is to use a consistent method, and adjust your intake according to your actual results. If you're losing faster than planned then eat more, if slower than planned then eat less.0 -
I actually don't. I found my caloric needs for a non workout day and a workout day, with the breakdown of macros, through a few sites to cross-reference. I stick with the max/min based on workout day or rest day.
I found that by searching and finding how many calories I was burning regardless of the type of exercise, was giving me license to eat badly. So after a major workout, when I am still hungry, I try to eat well and log it.
I also decided against getting a fitbit monitor, or any of its other cousins, to keep me from the false sense of inflating the actual numbers game.
For me, this method has worked since I lost a few pounds and my muscle tone has improved.0 -
No. HRM are for steady states of cardio which weight lifting isn't one, perhaps circuit training but that is debatable.Paul_Collyer wrote: »You'd have to wear a HRM to get a picture of calorie burn.
I have found by how much my weight fluctuates that I burn between 3-4 cals a minute. Some people might burn more, some may burn less. If your logging is accurate and you are using a food scale, then you should be able to use this method accurately.
One pound of fat burned is 3500 calories. So if you lose a half of pound more than you planned then you burned 1750 cals extra. Divide 1750 by minutes for all workouts in that period and it should get you close.
Or you could just figure on 5 cals a minute and adjust accordingly. Its not that big of a deal, just adjust your cals intake on the site to your liking so it stays close to what you want to lose.
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If I run or bike long distance or follow a fat burn DVD routine I count the calories but if I am at the gym for 30 mins doing a few sets I'd skip on counting that. It takes at least 20 mins to get the heart rate in the fat burning mode and since weight lifting is static there isn't much burning but rather building.0
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I log it into MFP using the database. I think I use "weightlifting, moderate intensity." In about 60mins, it's something like 100 cals burned. It isn't a huge amount, but I like to track my workout minutes for the week. I've lost fat over the last year, so it seems to be working for me.0
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I do! I have a Heart Rate Monitor though so when I go to the gym and start my workout cardio/weight lifting I start it and then when I am done I stop and log what it reads. Weight lifting burns a lot more than I thought it would.0
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wvtracyann wrote: »I do! I have a Heart Rate Monitor though so when I go to the gym and start my workout cardio/weight lifting I start it and then when I am done I stop and log what it reads. Weight lifting burns a lot more than I thought it would.
Incorrect, see previous discussion in this thread about why it doesn't burn as much as it says.0 -
When I log, I put 250 calories per hour. But I only do that to make sure I add more protein in my macros.0
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wvtracyann wrote: »Weight lifting burns a lot more than I thought it would.
That would be because you're using the HRM in a way that it's not designed to support, so it's overestimating.0 -
If I run or bike long distance or follow a fat burn DVD routine I count the calories but if I am at the gym for 30 mins doing a few sets I'd skip on counting that. It takes at least 20 mins to get the heart rate in the fat burning mode and since weight lifting is static there isn't much burning but rather building.
There is no "fat burning mode" there is calorie burning which indeed happens in any activity including weight lifting you participate in. Fat is lost through diet while eating in a deficit not by exercising. I assure you if you walk for twenty minutes you are burning calories regardless how high you heart rate is, though it is nearly half the calories if you were to run.0 -
I didn't used to log my lifting calories, but ive decided to start logging 100, just because that's how much a protein shake is and to deny myself the extra protein when I've been working so hard seems crazy. I have a feeling I burn a tad more. However, my HRM says 500ish for my weights sessions which seems highly unlikely0
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I have never eaten back my weight training calories, but in the beginning I would allow myself to eat ALL of my cardio calories that MFP gave me. It evened out and I lost at the proper rate.0
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When I did the MFP method, I used some formula that I found once upon a time...it gave me about 250ish calories for 60 minutes of lifting...which always seemed fairly reasonable.0
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I'm really glad I'm not the only one confused. There are soooo many people using mfp what has everyone been doing? I would just feel better staying within my goal, which is low as it is. Psychologically it is depressing when you see red, I'm just trying to be really accurate however at the end of the day it's working:)0
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What I log for for an hour of lifting is a little less than I get for an hour walk at 3.5 mph. About 170 calories.0
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awarreningermany wrote: »970Mikaela1 wrote: »What I log for for an hour of lifting is a little less than I get for an hour walk at 3.5 mph. About 170 calories.
Yep, makes no sense to me that I would burn more hardly sweating (polar gives me almost 500 cals for 45 steady mins on my mycrosstrainer) but way less for a 90 min superset weightlifting session and 10 minutes of hit when I am droppdripping ing with sweat (think mfp gives me less than 500 or about the same for harder work at double the timetime and polar 800 or so which make more sense to me!)
I also agree about red, my cals are OK right now but but not logging the right workout cals etc messes my macros up big time!
When you are walking you are "lifting and carrying" your entire bodyweight over a significant distance.
Think about how much weight you lifted during your weights session and and only moved it a relatively short distance.
Does that make more sense?
Forget sweating - that's overheating.0 -
awarreningermany wrote: »when I am droppdripping ing with sweat
Sweat is not an indicator of energy expended.0 -
awarreningermany wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »awarreningermany wrote: »when I am droppdripping ing with sweat
Sweat is not an indicator of energy expended.
Cool, thank you both for the info on that because I was totally thinking that sweating my buns off was a great sign of a good workout haha!
In both threads discussing this you've had pretty clear explanations of why resistance work doesn't burn a significant volume of calories. CV work and resistance work have very different effects, so think about them in those terms.
CV work improves stamina and capacity whilst consuming a significant volume of calories, resistance work is about composition.
If I do a 13 mile training run, I'll burn off around 1300-1500 calories in that 110 minutes. An hour of resistance training could credit me about 200 cals, because it's slower, much more limited in terms of movement and includes periods of lower activity changing exercise. In the grand scheme of things not accounting for that 200 cals isn't making a huge difference to outcomes.0 -
awarreningermany wrote: »just about nothing doing sprint intervals regardless of the fact that it might burn less calories than walking or running...that just seems rediculously low amount for that length of time training if you are working hard but ok!
So for a sprint interval session I'd go for something like:- Warm up for 15 minutes at 6min/km so c 1.5miles or 150 cals
- 400 metres fast so 25 cals
- 400 metres slow so 25 cals
- Repeat four times, so a further 200 cals
- Cool down for 15 minutes so 150 cals
- Total c 550cals
So with that in mind the sprint element is at best 40% of the session, and in practice half of that is the recoveries.
If you're doing 200 metre intervals, you're looking at c12 calories per sprint.
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I wondered about this too. In the end I settled on equating the calorie burn to walking, my other main activity. Not sure if I'm over or underestimating by doing that, but I needed some sort of figure for the purposes of deciding on my intake levels. Anywho, am in for the replies 0
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awarreningermany wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »awarreningermany wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »awarreningermany wrote: »when I am droppdripping ing with sweat
Sweat is not an indicator of energy expended.
Cool, thank you both for the info on that because I was totally thinking that sweating my buns off was a great sign of a good workout haha!
In both threads discussing this you've had pretty clear explanations of why resistance work doesn't burn a significant volume of calories. CV work and resistance work have very different effects, so think about them in those terms.
CV work improves stamina and capacity whilst consuming a significant volume of calories, resistance work is about composition.
If I do a 13 mile training run, I'll burn off around 1300-1500 calories in that 110 minutes. An hour of resistance training could credit me about 200 cals, because it's slower, much more limited in terms of movement and includes periods of lower activity changing exercise. In the grand scheme of things not accounting for that 200 cals isn't making a huge difference to outcomes.
Ok, well I do understand and I dont lol.
I accept that It seems to be the general agreement that on mfp you dont count any calories for weight training and I do understand that you burn different amounts and it is hard to judge. I am willing to follow along with that for a while the sake of trying ot be healthy and see how that effects my training, my body, and my weightloss.
But...at the end of the day, in my mind, I will never be able to actually agree with or accept the idea that I could possibly burn only 200 calories in an almost 2 hour gym session or just about nothing doing sprint intervals regardless of the fact that it might burn less calories than walking or running...that just seems rediculously low amount for that length of time training if you are working hard but ok!
Sorry you seem even more confused!
There isn't a "general agreement" not to count calories from strength workout. Many of the people who predominantly do strength workouts use the TDEE method which does include an estimated amount per workout. It's just estimated in advance by the site you get your numbers from. A lot of other people will use MFP's "strength training" or "circuit training" estimates.
Many people have suggested you just make an estimate and stick to it. You simply make adjustments based on actual results over time. I happen to guess around 350 - 400 for an hour of weights as I'm moving a lot of weight with very little rest. It may be completely inaccurate but that doesn't actually matter - I eat the appropriate amount of food to get the results I want over time whether the goal was losing weight or maintaining weight.
Of course sprint intervals burn significant amount of calories if you do them for a reasonable length of time. It's just again hard to measure - HRMs will exaggerate.
You really are making this far harder than it needs to be - you are seeking precision in an area where it's impossible to be precise and actually completely unnecessary to be precise!
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When you are walking you are "lifting and carrying" your entire bodyweight over a significant distance.
Think about how much weight you lifted during your weights session and and only moved it a relatively short distance.
You can't convince me that lifting 250+ pounds doing back squats, front squats, and deadlifts basically as HIIT for a whole hour that I'm not burning more calories as someone on an elliptical. What I am doing is WORK. What they are doing is... well... prancing.0 -
When you are walking you are "lifting and carrying" your entire bodyweight over a significant distance.
Think about how much weight you lifted during your weights session and and only moved it a relatively short distance.
You can't convince me that lifting 250+ pounds doing back squats, front squats, and deadlifts basically as HIIT for a whole hour that I'm not burning more calories as someone on an elliptical. What I am doing is WORK. What they are doing is... well... prancing.
Not trying to convince you of anything.
But you sure as hell aren't supporting 250lbs for a complete hour (time under tension...) or doing HIIT for an hour!
Trying to explain in simple terms to someone who is in analysis paralysis.0 -
I do the same as a previous poster and assume I burn around 100 calories per session (1 hour) so that I can have a protein shake to boost my protein intake for that day. Maybe I'm underestimating, in which case I have a larger deficit (which is a good thing), and maybe I'm underestimating, in which case at least I can't be too far off so it's not going to cause my any issues with going over my calories. This seems to be working for me anyway!0
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