TDEE - What constitutes "strenuous" exercise?

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exwilson
exwilson Posts: 154 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I'm looking at all these TDEE calculators that are out there and I'm curious about what should be considered strenuous exercise. For instance, I exercise around an hour a day, 7 days a week and burn approximately 700 calories on average based on HRM results. Should I consider that strenuous, moderate, light? I sweat buckets and can barely move when I finish, so I'd consider it strenuous, but what the hell do I know?

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  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    What are you actually doing for your workouts?
  • exwilson
    exwilson Posts: 154 Member
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    I do insanity and run. But that's not really relevant to my question. My question is more general and specific to term used by calculators on the web.
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,575 Member
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    It's totally relevant to your question.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    exwilson wrote: »
    I do insanity and run. But that's not really relevant to my question. My question is more general and specific to term used by calculators on the web.

    How is it not relative? You could be walking for an hour and over estimating your calorie burn for all I know, that's why I asked...
  • exwilson
    exwilson Posts: 154 Member
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    Sorry, let me put this another way. I'm not having any trouble with fitness or weight loss. It's not relevant because I'm not looking for advice. I'm simply curious as to what the various TDEE calculators mean when they use the term "strenuous".

    To me, strenuous might mean one thing, while to someone else it might mean something different. So in order to remove relative terms from the equation, I would expect to see some explanation of strenuous that normalizes the term, e.g. cals burned per minute, time spent at 80% max HR etc. However, I've not seen any such explanation on these calculators that are out there.
  • chouflour
    chouflour Posts: 193 Member
    edited April 2015
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    For research purposes (which ought to be what's backing the formulas) strenuous activity is defined as >6 METS (metabolic equivalents). So strenuous should be burning 6+ times your BMR for that time period. Moderate is 3-6 METS.

    I've also seen the talking test - that if you can sing, it's light, if you can talk in full sentences it's moderate and single words at a time is strenuous.
  • exwilson
    exwilson Posts: 154 Member
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    Cool! That's the first time I've heard the term METS. Any links you can point me to?
  • Foamroller
    Foamroller Posts: 1,041 Member
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    Strenuous = hardly able to talk, panting heavily. For ME, that's somewhere between 84-88% HRM while cycling. HRM is sport specific, meaning you have different "zones" in different types of exercise. Kcal burn is individual, not possible to generalize.

    If you want to know more, google physiological response to exercise or read a textbook about exercise.

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