any one else reluctant to add swimming in exercise?

If you think it's too high, try only eating half of your calories back. Most people under-estimate how much they eat and over-estimate how much they burn. Better safe than sorry!

Swimming is a great way to burn calories! And I know the numbers are high, but they are definitely quite accurate. Check any calorie counting website!

Before I got my HRM I never ate back all of my exercise calories (which I'm glad I didn't because MFP was estimating higher than what I was actually burning). I would just not eat them all back. Also before I got my HRM I used several online calculators and picked the lowest number.

I always have thought MFP allows too many calories. I usually enter half the time. Instead of 60 min I put 30 on the things I think are too high. Gardening allows almost 300 calories an hour. I think that is too much.

Not sure how it calculates those calories, but in water you are constantly resisting something, and you tend to burn more calories because of that. I swam in a pool doing what I would call light-moderate work for about 7 hours (learning to SCUBA dive) and I gave myself a conservative burned calorie amount by shortening how long I actually did the activity. I logged 2 hours instead of 7 because I wasn't exerting physical effort the entire time, but I was certainly doing it most of the time. I'd still use their calculations, but just be conservative about calories burned that you log so you won't be tempted by the enormous calorie deficit. To be on the safe side, when I feel I burned less calories than MFP is trying to approximate, I try not to eat more than half of the calories earned from exercise.

You can definitely double check the numbers on a couple other sites but swimming and water aerobics are REALLY good calorie burners!

Ever seen a fat swimmer ? Not to many they all are pretty lean. Swimming uses all your muscles and except for maybe rock climbing and wrestling, its probably one of the highest burns out there.

Swimming is ridiculous in terms of calories burned. At the OTC in Colorado Springs, the athletes that burn the most are the swimmers- their nutritional needs were something crazy like 5000cal/day. I may not be remembering with the utmost accuracy, but the swimmers burned the most- period. So I would never feel bad about what seems to be a ludicrous burn- I think that being in the water, you are just less likely to feel "hot" as quickly due to the fact you are in water.

I haven't looked up what MFP alots for swimming, but generally the values they give are probably too high for all exercises, so reduce by say 20%. Swimming laps is great exercise. I used to swim and play waterpolo. When I swim now, which is not often, just a few laps, and my body is sore all over the next day. Swimming gives a full body workout swimming laps. When I do swim, I rotate between different strokes, front "freestyle" crawl, backstroke, breaststroke, treading water with "egg-beater" kick, flutter kick, but I don't do butterfly stroke anymore, and I am not strong enough to do this anymore.

If you are treading water, use your arms vigorously, and if you can learn to do the "egg-beater" underwater kick that water polo players use, the you can really get a good leg workout.

I put swimming in. however MFP is so HIGH on calorie burn. I wear a HRM for running and biking and the numbers are way off. Cant for swimming. But my take is swimming is equilavent to a easy walk or a moderate walk. I do not eat my calories back for swimming but my swimming is usually tagged with a run or bike which I eat all back

Swimming burns alot of calories for two reasons: Resistance is the first. It makes swimming that much more effective, almost like stretching, cardio and weight training all in one. Even more so if you are using paddles and fins. The second reason is temperature. Your body has to burn extra calories to keep itself in homeostasis (98.6 degrees) and pool water is usually in the 50-60 degree range so that is alot of work. I, however, do not accept the calorie counts MFP gives because they are always too high for me and I have a HRM I use for walking and jogging. MFP is never right. I swim an hour straight of breaststroke laps and do 15 minutes of water aerobic exercises and it suggests that I burned like 3000 some odd calories. It could be right but I really don't want to risk it so I log 728 for the swimming which is the lowest estimate I got from a different calculator and 160 for the aerobics because that is a little more than I burn doing land aerobics for 15 minutes. If I were you I would use a rough estimate about half of what it gives you or less and eat back the calories from it. you could try using a HRM in the water as well but I have gotten poor results with my Polar FT7 which is supposed to be waterproof. Something about the chlorine messing with the signal. Just realize that you definitely burn more calories swimming than you think you would. Hope this helps.

Lol, when I saw this topic, my first thought was "well, yeah. I want to lose weight to look better, and right now NO ONE wants to see me in a bathing suit!" lol. Totally not what I thought this would be.

In any case, I can see both sides of the argument. Swimming (if you're really working at it, not just kinda lounging in the pool) is a great cal burner because of the water resistance, but in my experience MFP's numbers are way off. The problem is, you don't want to not eat any of those calories back at all (especially if MFP's db is even close to right) because you'll be depriving your body too much. I'd go with the half time thing. Even if the db is closer to correct than you think, eating back half the cals will give your body enough to not freak itself out, but if the db is really high, eating back half should still keep you under what the actual burn is.

My daughter is a swimmer and when they start their season the coaches tell them are burning between 1000-2000 calories per practice session (some days are more intense than other and they practice about 2 hours) Granted this is competition swimming and it all depends on how hard you work.

Someone commented on gardening...I wear my hrm when I mow the lawn and I burn between 500-800 calories in the 1-1.5 hours it takes me to mow. It is all based on your weight and how hard you work.