Circuits and calories

I do a similar kind of training - it looks like you're into OCR too! I've created by own exercise options and I also wear a HRM monitor. Depending on what the circuit involves, I would generally burn between 300-400 in a 40 minute session. But it varies and we may have different stats. It's also dubious how accurate a HRM monitor is for this, because it's not steady state cardio. But it's 90% of what I do, so I'd like to track it and I only eat back about 50% of my exercise calories just to even out any discrepancies.

I have the fitbit charge HR and I tend to do a lot of circuit based workouts, but I do them at home using DVD's (mostly beachbody programs). I recently tried out Insanity Max 30 which are the hardest 30 minute workouts I've ever done. I truly max out until I'm breathless, take a quick break and I'm right back in it. These are seriously tough workouts.

I am 5'4 female, 26, 126 lbs and my fitbit says I burn at the most 240 calories in about 33 minutes including cool-down. Also, I've done the less intense but still challenging Focus T25 videos (Gamma round) and seem to burn around 180-200 calories in 28 minutes. These focus more on weightlifting and less on cardio.

So if I burn an average of 7.3 calories per minute based on the insanity workouts, I could burn around 300 calories in 40 minutes, or 7.1 calories per minute based on T25 I could burn about 285 calories in 40 minutes. Similarly a 30 minute run at a comfortable pace will burn about 320 calories. I feel like I workout way harder during the videos, yet they don't burn as many calories.

I've put my full trust in my fitbit, eaten back all my exercise calories and have lost weight/maintained weight as expected. I hope this information helps! You'd be surprised how much you think you're burning vs what reality is.

Yes I put in all my information first. The fitbit tracks steps but it also tracks heart rate which I think is what it uses to estimate my calories burned. When I start and stop a workout I can press a button so it identifies it as a workout. On the computer I can get a graph showing my heart rate, steps, and calories burned during that time. So during a circuit workout my heart rate fluctuates a lot, but when I run on my treadmill for example, it's almost a straight line as it's steady state cardio.

I know it's not perfectly accurate, but it seems to be a good estimation that's been working for me since I bought my fitbit back in March.

I do similar workouts for about 60-75 minutes. I just bought a Garmin Vivosmart. I was using a regular HRM before. When I was deciding my other choice would have been the FIT HR but I wanted the chest strap option. I'm not an Apple fan so that wouldn't have been an option for me and I'm finding the Vivosmart to be a better option if kettlebells in my circuit versus my regular HRM because I was always worried about damaging it. This hasn't been the case with the Vivosmart.