If you're not losing weight...
dewsmom78
Posts: 498 Member
And using the calories burned on MFP, they are NOT accurate. Invest in a heart rate monitor. I see alot of my mfp friends posting that they're burning 600+ calories in a half hour, on an elliptical or walking. I am 10lbs overweight and I burn about 100 calories walking in 30 minutes. So - if you're not accurately posting calories burned and you're eating those calories back, you're not going to lose weight. Just a tip....
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Or people not weighing their food or liquids. They are probably over-estimating their food intake. I've been at this for a while now and even *I* still can't eyeball a portion.0
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Estimates from a heart rate monitor are not going to be any better as it measures your heart rate, period.0
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And using the calories burned on MFP, they are NOT accurate. Invest in a heart rate monitor. I see alot of my mfp friends posting that they're burning 600+ calories in a half hour, on an elliptical or walking. I am 10lbs overweight and I burn about 100 calories walking in 30 minutes. So - if you're not accurately posting calories burned and you're eating those calories back, you're not going to lose weight. Just a tip....
Heart rate monitors have limitations. They are only any good for steady state cardio. otherwise they are wildly inacurate. Ironically steady state cardio such as running are the calories estimates that MFP are most accurate on. Whatever method you use you just need to take into account you are working on estimates. If your eating those calories back and gaining weight then reduce the % of them you eat back. Also check the accuracy of your food logging0 -
agreed. i keep seeing huge calorie burns which seem unrealistic. people tend to over estimate their exercise burn. just be conservative about how many calories you actually burned.0
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Right, I know HRM's are not perfect, but like pp said, they're good for cardio. Maybe not so much strength training. My HRM shows calories burned much lower than mfp, because the HRM takes into consideration your age, weight and height.
I also agree about weighing food, it is so easy to under estimate how much food you're actually eating. And you have to log every single thing you eat. People tend to forget things like coffee creamer, condiments, or even two bites of their kid's hot dog and mac n cheese. Guilty of that one lol.0 -
i have found the estimates from mfp to be fairly close to my HRM. I might have to adjust a few minutes here and there but its not as widely inaccurate as the myths on the forums tend to be.0
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I do agree about the HRM and its superb advice if the person is only going by MFP calculations and eating back the workout calories ..measuring and using a HRM are almost essential to doing MFP properly..it would be like riding a bike without wheels otherwise.0
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Funny, so the circulatory system dictates one's metabolic rate and it's efficiency? Contributing is a far cry to draw a conclusion based on cause and effect.
HRM is like a tachometer (engine rpm gauge) in a car. It tells you how fast the pistons are rotating but does NOTHING on how fast you are going or how much fuel is being used. Under certain ideal conditions you can make an inference but you have to know exact details on the rest of environment to get a good idea on the economy.
It a good tool but use it for what it can do, not what you hope it will or what the marketing is espousing.0 -
What works for me: take what mfp says for exercise and cut that in half. Then only eat back half of that. If mfp says I burn 400 calories, I assume I really only burn 200 and then eat back 100.0
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And using the calories burned on MFP, they are NOT accurate. Invest in a heart rate monitor. I see alot of my mfp friends posting that they're burning 600+ calories in a half hour, on an elliptical or walking. I am 10lbs overweight and I burn about 100 calories walking in 30 minutes. So - if you're not accurately posting calories burned and you're eating those calories back, you're not going to lose weight. Just a tip....
You mention how MFP's calculator is inaccurate then later admit that even your HRM isn't. Thanks for the chuckle.
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map my run and my polar watch are approx the same..MFP shows I burn way more calories that the other two things. I go by my polar watch and Map my Run--the calories from MFP are a general amount.0
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What works for me: take what mfp says for exercise and cut that in half. Then only eat back half of that. If mfp says I burn 400 calories, I assume I really only burn 200 and then eat back 100.
I guess I will start doing this. Cause not everyone uses a HRM like myself and I rely on MFP to be at least a little correct
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I am 10lbs overweight and I burn about 100 calories walking in 30 minutes. .
Yep, that sounds about right. That's what I figure for walking too.
And for cycling, I go with 100 cal per 5 km. So if I manage to cycle at 20 km/h for an hour, that's 400 calories .... NOT 800 or 1000 or something.
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Just remember though that while walking may burn 100 cals you would have burned some of that sitting on your backside watching tv so really you are only actually adding an extra 60-70 cals to the amount you can eat.0
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Cut MFP calories in half, judge weight lost against targeted weight loss across 8 weeks, adjust numbers or calories eaten back
It's as valid an approach as any other
My HRM is good for steady-state cardio and I take 100%, for calisthenics / HIIT I take about 75%, for strength about 50% ...actually what I do is round it down / cut off about 200 calories
Estimates
Estimates everywhere0 -
It is all just estimates ... but if you discover that you're losing weight with your estimates, you've got it right for you.
However, if you are not losing weight ... maybe you need to adjust your estimates. Maybe you aren't burning as many calories as you think you are.0 -
This is why im so paranoid about eating back my exercise calories !!! i never have big burns so i just leave them alone! today was 25 min cardio, 25 min strength and 25 min walk and ive logged just over 400 calories burnt, i wont eat them0
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usernameenvy wrote: »This is why im so paranoid about eating back my exercise calories !!! i never have big burns so i just leave them alone! today was 25 min cardio, 25 min strength and 25 min walk and ive logged just over 400 calories burnt, i wont eat them
Well that's just wrong then
unless you've reset MFP to a cut from TDEE it is not designed for you to not eat them back .. it is important to fuel your body to make fitness gains0 -
isulo_kura wrote: »And using the calories burned on MFP, they are NOT accurate. Invest in a heart rate monitor. I see alot of my mfp friends posting that they're burning 600+ calories in a half hour, on an elliptical or walking. I am 10lbs overweight and I burn about 100 calories walking in 30 minutes. So - if you're not accurately posting calories burned and you're eating those calories back, you're not going to lose weight. Just a tip....
Heart rate monitors have limitations. They are only any good for steady state cardio. otherwise they are wildly inacurate. Ironically steady state cardio such as running are the calories estimates that MFP are most accurate on. Whatever method you use you just need to take into account you are working on estimates. If your eating those calories back and gaining weight then reduce the % of them you eat back. Also check the accuracy of your food logging
This! They're all inaccurate. Exercise and don't eat back in you can bear it! If not add 100 cals at a time on days you're working out so ensure you're not eating back a bunch of calories that you never really burned0 -
Pretty much all methods of estimating exercise calorie burn are going to be inaccurate to some degree.
I get around this by using TDEE-20% for my goals. I first estimated my TDEE by taking a wild guesstimate of the rough average of how much exercise I do, and using online calculators. Then I logged and tracked real-world results, found out that my TDEE range was actually higher than the calculators suggested, and adjusted my calories upward a bit.0 -
And using the calories burned on MFP, they are NOT accurate. Invest in a heart rate monitor. I see alot of my mfp friends posting that they're burning 600+ calories in a half hour, on an elliptical or walking. I am 10lbs overweight and I burn about 100 calories walking in 30 minutes. So - if you're not accurately posting calories burned and you're eating those calories back, you're not going to lose weight. Just a tip....
The scale of comparison I like to use to try and figure out how accurate calorie burn is that a professional footballer/soccer player can burn 750 calories+ in a 90 minute match running around constantly. I think for most people if they compare their efforts and time spent exercising to that will realise they haven't burn all that much.0 -
Cut MFP calories in half, judge weight lost against targeted weight loss across 8 weeks, adjust numbers or calories eaten back
It's as valid an approach as any other
My HRM is good for steady-state cardio and I take 100%, for calisthenics / HIIT I take about 75%, for strength about 50% ...actually what I do is round it down / cut off about 200 calories
Estimates
Estimates everywhere
This absolutely, they are all just estimates and just use soem common sense based on the results you get.
HRMs funnily enough are suited for what they were designed for and thats monitoring heart rates, beyond that they have weaknesses.
MFP may overestimate, but for other people its just fine. There are also many activities, many of which you wont have even entered. Lots of people overestimate their own effort.
Some of you enjoy making it more complicated than it really is.0 -
This would be why the majority of MFP'ers only eat back a portion of their exercise calories.0
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Someone on here (I wish I could remember who) posted a good formula for arriving at a closer calorie burn approximation: METs of the exercise you performed (easy to find on a Google search) X body weight in kilograms X time performed as percentage of an hour.
As an example, moderate stationary cycling is 3 METs, I weigh 235lbs so 106.5kg, and I do it for 30 minutes which is .5 of an hour. The formula would be 3*106.5*0.5=159.75calories, which I'd log as 160. For the same 30 minutes of moderate cycling MFP would like to give me 370 calories, a clearly insane allowance by any measure.0 -
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Pretty much all methods of estimating exercise calorie burn are going to be inaccurate to some degree.
I get around this by using TDEE-20% for my goals. I first estimated my TDEE by taking a wild guesstimate of the rough average of how much exercise I do, and using online calculators. Then I logged and tracked real-world results, found out that my TDEE range was actually higher than the calculators suggested, and adjusted my calories upward a bit.
Calculator results and calorie burns are estimated starting points. You need to refine them based on the results you are getting.
It doesn't take very long to figure out how much your exercise is affecting your results when compared with your food logging.
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sgthaggard wrote: »
Not necessarily.0 -
What people conveniently forget or ignore when estimating their calories, whether with MFP or MET, is that they use the energy expenditure corresponding to the high end of the intensity spectrum and that the estimates are derived from on a subset population that may not be like you.
For example the calories estimate for a 165lbs person who ride a bicycle at 12 miles for an hour is 599 (both MFP and MET) using Bicycling 12-14mph. Whereas, using 10-12mph MFP or 10-11.99mph MET would get you 450 and 509 calories, respectively. Since going at 14mph requires more work than 12mph, why would you use the higher burn rate?
The second unknown for most people is their metabolic efficiency. The general range is 20-25%, with elite athletes in the 25% range (a few measured at 27%). The fitter your are, the higher the efficiency and thus less calories is needed to do the same amount of work. For the 599 calories burnt, it translate to roughly 500 kj at 20% efficiency. Whereas an elite athlete, at 25% efficiency, equates to 478 calories. This a 25% reduction in energy expenditure. The equation to convert work is Calories = kj / efficiency / 4.184. Only by referring to reference study(ies) would you get a sense of the efficiency of the study participants and how it is being used applied to the general population.
Although MFP and MET are both estimates, you still have to use it correctly. The plug and play nature of this application makes it very easy for most people to over estimate what they are doing.
As for HRM, most people are do not realize that their heart rate response is different depending on the exercise performed (again the calories estimate is good only within a narrow band of intensity/conditions and generally does not apply for low or high intensity workouts). For example, your heart rate is higher when running than bicycling for the same amount of actual work. So which HRM model do you have that allows for correction of efficiency based on the type of exercise performed?
You may say so what, but here is the kicker: "An 176lbs (80kg) man who remains at the same weight for 10 years has, over this period, managed to balance a grand total of about 9.1 million kCal (Calories). In contrast, if he gains 22lbs (10kg) over this period, it’s because of a mismatch of about 70,000 kCal (Calories). In ten years, that works out at 19 kCal (Calories) per day." Lifted from http://sportsscientists.com/2010/01/exercise-and-weight-loss/, a really good read.0
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