Crossfit?

Logging is easy...I created a custom cardio exercise called CrossFit and enter my time and calories there. Now how much to enter is an entirely different question, if that's what you meant.

I have a Polar M400 with HRM and when I first started CrossFit last year, I wore it for every workout (yes burpees were painful and cleans often caught it, but I survived) and tracked my calorie burn that way. Granted, I'm fully aware there are issues with using HRM to track calorie burn during non-steady state cardio, but with that understood, I tracked for a period of 3 months and was able to come up with an average calorie burn of about 650 calories. A few workouts went as high at 1,200 (heavy cardio days - i.e. lots of running or a WOD like Murph) and some were as low as 200-300 (heavy lifting days) but I tossed these out of the average calling them outliers.

I now sometimes wear a Polar A360 with HR to track my workouts, but even if I"m not, I know on average I'm burning about 650 calories and will enter that for a "normal" workout. If the workout is heavier on ore cardio, I'll bump it up as high as 900 calories, and if it's more strength I'll drop it.

In the end, I use TDEE to set my daily calorie goal, so I'm not too worried about my burn being 100% accurate (that's why TDEE is nice). I just enter it because I like having it in MFP for tracking purposes.

heyspearsy wrote: »

Some thoughts.

• If you're trying to lose weight, just enter circuit training, and you will likely have underestimated your calorie burn, leaving you a deficit.
• Use a heart-rate monitor, like the above poster mentioned. Eat back all the calories. I did this last year when I tracked everything and found success.
• Use TDEE, don't track exercise at all, and adjust your goal-calories monthly based on results. This is my preferred strategy.

I find the circuit training entry in MFP gives me really high, inflated burns.

OP I notice you have a running bib in your profile photo. I think that's a helpful way is to compare the level of effort to running. Like sometimes I do a circuit training routine with a trainer for about an hour. Afterwards I think, if I had ran for an hour instead, how would it compare? Yes my muscles might be more sore, but usually the run is more effort for the same amount of time. Then I have a high limit for calories that I know I burned less than.