weight lifting and logging calories burned

I've found the most accurate way is to buy a heart rate monitor with a chest strap. Mine has showed me that I actually burn more calories weight lifting than the majority or my cardio sessions but the results will be different for everyone.

SnowballsMom805 wrote: »

hey friends out there! I am new to weight lifting. is there any way to log calories burned through weight lifting that makes more sense? I felt so good when I would log my stairmaster calories and it would show I burned 500+ calories in an hour. However now I feel kind of bad when logging my calories weight lifting and it says I only burn 231 in an hour. Should I not worry about calories burning anymore on my weight lifting days? Please advise

You would log 231 calories of food eaten so why not log estimated 231 calories burned during your strength training?

Lifting isn't about big calorie burns.
If you want calorie burn bragging rights buy a bicycle!!

While lifting usually the goal is to build muscle, so we need calories with which to do that. Try eating slightly above maintenance on lifting days, and going for a deficit via cardio &/or diet on your other days.

I don't understand the comments that HRMs don't work for weightlifting. I regularly get my HR elevated when lifting, and often burn as much as a cardio session, especially when lifting heavy & doing lower body work (deadlifts, squats, lunges) and when oly lifting heavy stuff overhead (snatch, clean & jerk). If you're sitting on a bench doing curls with a 15lb db, then yeah, you're not burning a lot even though you're getting some other benefits from the exercise. But if you're lifting heavy, you're likely burning a crap-ton.

desifink wrote: »

I don't understand the comments that HRMs don't work for weightlifting. I regularly get my HR elevated when lifting, and often burn as much as a cardio session, especially when lifting heavy & doing lower body work (deadlifts, squats, lunges) and when oly lifting heavy stuff overhead (snatch, clean & jerk). If you're sitting on a bench doing curls with a 15lb db, then yeah, you're not burning a lot even though you're getting some other benefits from the exercise. But if you're lifting heavy, you're likely burning a crap-ton.

How do you know you are burning a ton of calories. If it is by assuming that elevated heart rate = more calories burned, this is not true. The purpose of a heart rate monitor is not to measure calorie burns.

desifink wrote: »

I don't understand the comments that HRMs don't work for weightlifting. I regularly get my HR elevated when lifting, and often burn as much as a cardio session, especially when lifting heavy & doing lower body work (deadlifts, squats, lunges) and when oly lifting heavy stuff overhead (snatch, clean & jerk). If you're sitting on a bench doing curls with a 15lb db, then yeah, you're not burning a lot even though you're getting some other benefits from the exercise. But if you're lifting heavy, you're likely burning a crap-ton.

The thing with heart rate monitors is that they measure your heart rate, not the calories you burn. Then they use certain algorithms that match heart rate with with oxygen uptake to estimate your calories. These algorithms are reasonably accurate when you are doing steady state common cardio like walking, running, cycling...etc, and are not accurate for weightlifting which produces artificial spikes in heart rate that don't represent oxygen uptake causing your heart rate monitor to over-estimate your actual lifting calories.

SnowballsMom805 wrote: »

I have noticed that Ive gotten hungrier since doing strength training. Is that normal?

Yes, this is normal.

kshama2001 wrote: »

Jeremy_Noel wrote: »

Good morning,
Weight lifting tends to burn less calories DIRECTLY, but that does NOT mean it is less effective in the pursuit of weight loss. Weight training increases your metabolic rate so you are burning more calories all the time, even when not directly exercising, for a period of about 36 hours. Additionally, increasing muscle mass increases the your base metabolic rate over the long haul which means you will naturally burn more calories throughout the day.

Give this a check:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/fat_loss_training_wars.htm

Yup, just read about this in New Rules of Lifting for Women.

While this is true, it tends to be significantly overstated. The fact that metabolic rate is "increased for 36 hours" (and that is not a proven thing--studies have shown a lot of variability in EPOC duration), the increase is more like a couple of calories per minute, or 75-150 calories total. Better than a kick in the pants, but not as grandiose as people would like you to believe. The same with "increased muscle mass". The increase is quite modest. This is one of those situations where conditions for elites are inappropriately generalized to a recreational population. If someone gains 30-40lbs of muscle, then, yes, you'll have a substantial increase in daily calorie burn. But most people will never reach that level--something like 4-8 lbs is much more realistic.

I'm going to switch to the other side of the argument now. Because the calorie burns from EPOC and muscle mass have tended to be overstated, in trying to maintain perspective, there is a tendency to dismiss those burns as insignificant.

Just because calorie expenditure during lifting cannot be accurately estimated, it does not mean that no significant burn is taking place.

For the average person, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. An hour's worth of quality lifting (staying focused, as opposed to the 30 seconds of lifting, 5 minutes of texting I see in our gym every day), can probably burn 200-400 calories, depending on the size of the person, consistency of effort, etc. Add the modest EPOC and you are conservatively getting close to or exceeding the minimum of 300 calories per session recommended by organizations such as ACSM.

Plenty of people have lost weight via lifting and diet only so I don't think the calorie expenditure can be dismissed. However, those people are likely lifting at a higher volume and intensity than the average novice on a weight loss program.

In summary:

1. Lifting weights does burn calories, albeit at a lower rate than more intense cardio.

2. While the rate is lower at the time of exercise, there is an additional "boost" that while often over exaggerated, does exist and does contribute to the deficit.

3. While the rate is lower, if one increases the volume/duration of the workout, one can burn enough calories with lifting alone to support weight loss efforts. However, someone starting a lifting program, or someone doing 30-45 min of lifting before or after a cardio workout is probably more in the 100-200 calorie range.

4. Because of the different physiological response to lifting weights, HRMs and calculators based on heart rate are useless for estimating calorie burn. Increased HR during aerobic exercise is driven by completely different physiological processes than during lifting. So while one might see the same 150 HR during squats as during a treadmill run, completely different things are happening in the body.

5. The muscle-sparing effects of lifting weights, along with the very modest increases in BMR that come from increased muscle mass are important contributors to short-term weight loss, and are likely even more critical for long-term success.

6. While the benefits of lifting weights are real, they are still often significantly overstated by people trying to make a buck off of you. This is especially the true when they are selling the idea of increased post-exercise metabolism and the calorie burning effect of increased muscle mass.