I really feel like the "calories burned" estimate for exercise is just a crapshoot

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  • goldthistime
    goldthistime Posts: 3,214 Member
    edited March 2016
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    NEAT is non-exercise activity thermogenesis (calories burned not including exercise), and TDEE is Total Daily Energy Expenditure (includes calories for exercise). NEAT is the default MFP method. People who choose TDEE often concentrate on strength training over cardio (although not always of course).
  • goldthistime
    goldthistime Posts: 3,214 Member
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    Btw, I agree that it's difficult to accurately estimate calories burned during exercise. It's also difficult to estimate how big swings in exercise affect the rest of your day. If I really push it exercise-wise, I'm probably going to be sitting on the couch rather than cleaning up a storm. Vice versa, if it is a "rest day" for me, I'm brimming with energy and I find it difficult to stay under my calorie goals. Yet somehow it all works out.
  • mom23mangos
    mom23mangos Posts: 3,070 Member
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    NorthCascades wrote: »
    I use a power meter on my bike, for training purposes, but this means I know within 5% how many calories I've burned on every ride. Even when I forget to wear my HRM. The PM measures how much energy I put into the bike in a very precise way.

    A 50 mile ride burns about 2,000 Cal for me these days. I've been doing one every Saturday and another 50 to 75 miles during the rest of the week.

    I need to do that. I just use an app which takes your average speed and your weight, etc. So a 45 minute ride for me going 14mph with a tailwind shows up as more calories burned than a 45 minute ride going 9mph against a strong headwind.
  • ashleyrichey616
    ashleyrichey616 Posts: 15 Member
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    CindyFooWho wrote: »

    Real question... not to derail this, but does MFP even take WEIGHT into account when calculating calories? Like, last night I blew through a cardio class that, 25 pounds ago, would really wipe me out. And I thought, well it makes sense that it would be an easier workout without 25 pounds strapped to my back, right? Therefore, I'm probably burning fewer calories doing this thing now.

    While I agree that it's not totally accurate (when it comes to running, MFP is usually around 100-200 calories off what my HRM says for a long run, but for Zumba it can be anywhere from 50 to 250 off), I do know that it adapts for weight changes just based on seeing how things changed for me as I logged weekly weight changes.

    And like so many other people have said, I don't trust it to be spot-on, but it's a good guideline to go by, with 'tweaks' based on my actual IRL performance.
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
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    augustremulous wrote: »
    <<snip>>
    This site focuses so much on calculating calories consumed by weighting to the exact gram, so it seems weird that calories burned is pretty much a guess.

    It may be a guess, but it is an educated guess based on published research values for metabolic equivalent of tasks (METs). The METs values are used by many online calculators, including MFP; and they are a function of body weight. METs values can be used to estimate Calories burned per minute, which increase in relation to the intensity of the activity.

    For some activities, such as running and walking, it is somewhat more reliable to estimate how many Calories burned per minute are used by a person of body weight x travelling y distance in z amount of time. In contrast, an activity such as circuit training has too many variables (number of sets and reps per set, weight per rep, amount of rest between sets, amount of rest between individual exercises, etc.) for a single METs value to provide a similarly reliable estimate for a general user.

    Also, the METs values include your BMR (METs=1.0) in the estimated Calories burned per minute. The MFP Exercise Database does not subtract your BMR; so for very low intensity activities, such as METS = 2.5, the total estimated Calories burned per minute provided by MFP will be inflated quite a bit. For higher intensity activities, such as METs= 7.0 or greater, the total estimated Calories burned per minute provided by MFP will not be inflated as much.

    From what I have noticed by syncing a couple different apps, some (but not all) activity trackers may account for your BMR when syncing individual exercises with the MFP Exercise Database.

    I would assume most (if not all) of the all-day activity trackers do account for your BMR when syncing individual exercises; because the all-day activity trackers are designed with those algorithms, and most of them also use your history of Calories In versus Calories Out to fine-tune the estimates for how many extra Calories burned per minute you earn during timed activities.

    Please see these links for basic information on METs...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent

    https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/

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