question about exercise and calories burned

greengirl4 · May 2015

I have been doing a variety of exercise over the past month, ie., jogging/walking, cardio classes at the gym, cycling, stairs; and I generally check a couple of different websites when trying to figure out my calories burned. For example, today I jogged/walked for 53 minutes. I use gmap-pedometer.com to track my route and today I went 6.88km (4.27miles). There is a calorie counter on the website and it tells me I burned 733 calories, according to my weight and distance jogged, it doesn't take into account the duration or speed I travelled. Another website I used to check today is nutritionfirstfitness.com and it asks for my weight, distance jogged, time spent and incline (I leave it at 0 incline unless on the treadmill), and according to it I burned 805 calories.

I am 227 lbs at the moment, I am 5'11'', 43 years old and the top of my goal weight range is 178, so I am considered obese. I realize that being as heavy as I am, that I will burn more calories than I will when I am closer to my goal weight. I am fine with the discrepancy between these two websites as I generally just go with the lower estimate when they're that close.

My question, though, is I'm wondering if either of these are even close to accurate? I've read lots of posts from many of you that clearly know a hell of a lot more than me so if you tell me that I'm logging too many exercise calories, then I will believe you. The general consensus seems to be that many people on here cut in half the calories that they are logging.

Right now, my weight is going down at a rate that I am happy with, but I wonder if eventually the way I'm tracking will bite me in the *kitten*. I get 1500 calories a day and when I exercise I usually eat back about half of those, and on my days off from exercise, I'm usually pretty close to 1500, +/- 100 calories or so.

Any advice is appreciated.

futuremanda · May 2015

Honestly, the best way to know is just to test it.

So if you get 1500 and calculators say you burn 700, eat 1850 on exercise days (50% of exercise cals -- which is what you say you usually eat back). Give it maybe 5 weeks and see what you weigh. Get an average over the weeks. Is this more or less than what you targeted? If more, you're burning more than 350. (You're probably burning more than 350! So you could try 75%?)

Note though: If you're off on your food, your test will be imperfect, because your actual weight loss could not match targeted loss because of inaccuracies in the food log OR in burn estimates, and you wouldn't know. But on the other hand, nothing has to be perfect -- just close enough. So a working estimate for burn and a working method of logging your food is... working.

And if you want to even out your eating better, take your targeted calories to eat back and multiply by the number of days you exercise. So if you run 4 days a week, that's 350 x 4 = 1400. But there are 7 days a week, so divide: 1400/7 = 200. So you could add 200 calories to your everyday, for a flat, consistent target of 1700, that you can eat on an exercise day and also on a rest day.

Otherwise, there's no way to know. I get the sense that some exercise types are more inflated than others. I'm personally a bit suspicious of 10 cals / min or more... though I do realize that larger people / more intense exercises make this more plausible. I'd never accept it for myself though. 10 / min might be one starting point for your running cal estimate (putting you around 530 for your sample day).

nikkerbob · May 2015

I had the same issue. I use the Nike Run app (free). You put your weight in and after a work out it tells your calories. It does map your route and talks to you and tells you your "fast" pace and "slow" pace, so it can tell when you are running and walking. The only thing I dislike about it, it can't tell when you are going up and down stairs, but meh, you just know you burned a little more

I enjoy it and use it for all runs and log the calories is says, as like I said, it has my weight and can tell when I was putting effort in and when I was walking.

greengirl4 · May 2015

Thanks futuremanda. That's a good idea to even out my target calories for the week. It would definitely make it easier to plan meals, and not leave me feeling hungry or deprived on my non-exercise days. I don't do the same exercise every week, I kind of just do what I feel like doing day by day, but I generally aim for 500-800 calories burned 5-6 days a week. Of course the 800 calories burned is questionable, I think I will begin logging 50-75% of my exercise calories and see how that goes. Anyway, thanks for your input!

SamZ10 · May 2015

I would highly suggest buying a heart rate monitor.. I honestly didn't find any accurate calories on any website but the HRM will give you as close as possible calories burned.

SamZ10 · May 2015

futuremanda wrote: »

Honestly, the best way to know is just to test it.

So if you get 1500 and calculators say you burn 700, eat 1850 on exercise days (50% of exercise cals -- which is what you say you usually eat back). Give it maybe 5 weeks and see what you weigh. Get an average over the weeks. Is this more or less than what you targeted? If more, you're burning more than 350. (You're probably burning more than 350! So you could try 75%?)

Note though: If you're off on your food, your test will be imperfect, because your actual weight loss could not match targeted loss because of inaccuracies in the food log OR in burn estimates, and you wouldn't know. But on the other hand, nothing has to be perfect -- just close enough. So a working estimate for burn and a working method of logging your food is... working.

And if you want to even out your eating better, take your targeted calories to eat back and multiply by the number of days you exercise. So if you run 4 days a week, that's 350 x 4 = 1400. But there are 7 days a week, so divide: 1400/7 = 200. So you could add 200 calories to your everyday, for a flat, consistent target of 1700, that you can eat on an exercise day and also on a rest day.

Otherwise, there's no way to know. I get the sense that some exercise types are more inflated than others. I'm personally a bit suspicious of 10 cals / min or more... though I do realize that larger people / more intense exercises make this more plausible. I'd never accept it for myself though. 10 / min might be one starting point for your running cal estimate (putting you around 530 for your sample day).

According to my HRM I only burned 10/minutes running or working out to my max.

greengirl4 · May 2015

Just downloaded the Nike run app, will try it next time I run and see how close it is to today's run. Thanks nikkerbob!

nikkerbob · May 2015

@greengirl4 Let me know how you like it !

futuremanda · May 2015

SamZ10 wrote: »

futuremanda wrote: »

Honestly, the best way to know is just to test it.

So if you get 1500 and calculators say you burn 700, eat 1850 on exercise days (50% of exercise cals -- which is what you say you usually eat back). Give it maybe 5 weeks and see what you weigh. Get an average over the weeks. Is this more or less than what you targeted? If more, you're burning more than 350. (You're probably burning more than 350! So you could try 75%?)

Note though: If you're off on your food, your test will be imperfect, because your actual weight loss could not match targeted loss because of inaccuracies in the food log OR in burn estimates, and you wouldn't know. But on the other hand, nothing has to be perfect -- just close enough. So a working estimate for burn and a working method of logging your food is... working.

And if you want to even out your eating better, take your targeted calories to eat back and multiply by the number of days you exercise. So if you run 4 days a week, that's 350 x 4 = 1400. But there are 7 days a week, so divide: 1400/7 = 200. So you could add 200 calories to your everyday, for a flat, consistent target of 1700, that you can eat on an exercise day and also on a rest day.

Otherwise, there's no way to know. I get the sense that some exercise types are more inflated than others. I'm personally a bit suspicious of 10 cals / min or more... though I do realize that larger people / more intense exercises make this more plausible. I'd never accept it for myself though. 10 / min might be one starting point for your running cal estimate (putting you around 530 for your sample day).

According to my HRM I only burned 10/minutes running or working out to my max.

HRM is accurate for steady state cardio only -- meaning continuous, steady effort (no intervals etc). So would definitely work well for running, depending on running style. For other things, since calculators and machines are also inaccurate, I'd default back to saying just use AN estimate from somewhere, and test the estimate for a few weeks to see your results.

And the fact that yours never gave you more than 10 cals / min is consistent with what I hear / read and partly why I don't trust any figure 10+ for myself (because I don't run, and I know I'm not going all out in that way, and I'm not obese or super tall).

greengirl4 · May 2015

I'll definitely keep the 10cals/minute in mind when I'm trying to calculate calories burned. If my numbers have me at or over that rate I'll be recording only some of those calories. Hopefully that will keep me more accurate with logging. Thanks for the info SamZ10 and futuremanda!

TimothyFish · May 2015

Most of my exercise is bicycling so I compare the estimates against bikecalculator.com, which uses the physics calculations (with a few assumptions) to calculate the energy required. Most of the estimators give numbers twice as large as it calculates. So, I tell the estimators that I weigh half as much as I do and they give me numbers that match my weight loss numbers.

bwogilvie · May 2015

My Garmin Forerunner 620 GPS/HRM watch estimates that I burn around 105 calories per mile running at a 7:30-8:00 pace. I'm 47 and 150 lb., and the calculator on the site that you mentioned produces an estimate about 14% higher. My Garmin estimates match well with my actual weight loss and maintenance, so I think they're pretty accurate. The calorie calculator at the Runner's World website overestimates too, but only by about 8%.

It's rare for exercise to burn 10 calories/minute or more, but it's not unheard of. I used to hit that value cycling when I weighed over 200 lb. These days I have to be going all out, or climbing a decent hill, to burn that much. But I usually burn around 14 calories a minute during my training runs, and on my 5K race in April I burned nearly 17 calories per minute.

greengirl4 · May 2015

Well the way I'm huffing and puffing I sure feel like I'm burning tons of calories, lol. I dream of the day when I can run an 8-minute mile bwogilvie!

I guess I'll just keep playing around with the numbers I log and as long as my weight continues downward, I'll be good. My food tracking is accurate as I have a scale and I do log everything so if I find I stop losing, I may have to lower my exercise calories logged some more. Thanks everyone for your expertise.

Kst76 · May 2015

I burn more than 10 cals per minute. Yes, I use a HR monitor. I burn 700 calories in an hour of steady running between 5.5 and 6.0 miles an hour.

question about exercise and calories burned

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