Accurately Gauging Calories Burned Through Exercise?

srecupid
srecupid Posts: 660 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
I like to eat and I don't want to cheat myself out of extra calories. But I also don't want to go overboard and consume too much. I don't know how accurate fitness trackers can actually be? Right now I'm usiing mapmyfitness to map walks. I work a physical job though and that wouldn't cover everything. I have a polar h7 for my indoor at home exercise but Its getting nice now outside and I would rather leave it at home most days

Replies

  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    Most recommendations here are to eat back half your exercise calories and see how that works for you. After a few weeks, if you are losing too fast or too slow, or you are really hungry, change the amount you eat back accordingly. Unfortunately, there's a certain amount of trial and error involved. I think the only way to be sure you are recording an accurate burn is if you are exercising in a lab hooked up to machines!
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    For most types of exercise, you can't really measure the calorie burn very accurately. For walking, the best thing you can do is log your food, exercise, and weight in great detail.

    For cycling, especially on a road bike, you can measure within a few percent of the truth using a power meter. It's expensive and adds weight to the bike. I really wish that kind of technology was available for other things people do.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Most "eat half your exercise calories" recommendations are based on nothing more than group think and a mistrust and misunderstanding of MFP's exercise database.
    You don't make an estimate more accurate by taking a random percentage away from it - you just make it lower.

    Exercise estimate accuracy is very dependant on what exercise you are doing, that should decide the tool or tools you choose.

    But in the end if you are consistent and adjust your calorie goal based on long term trends actual accuracy isn't that important for most people.

    I use Garmin or Strava for my long distance cycling events despite them being very poor in terms of accuracy, doesn't stop me from getting my calorie balance right.

    I've seen a few experiments with people wearing a variety of trackers at the same time and the numbers diverge greatly - but consistency would still make them usable.

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    edited June 2016
    That's why I used the TDEE with deficit method, to be honest... Just picked a number for my activity and ate at a 20% deficit. If I lost too much and was hungry, I ate more. If I didn't lose, I ate less (ok that really didn't happen until I started eating at maintenance anyway). Seemed to work just as well honestly.
  • BikeTourer
    BikeTourer Posts: 167 Member
    My tracker works fine for me and it gives be substantially less than and of the web estimators where you only enter height, weight, age, gender, which I don't like but obviously reflects the real me. I eat back my exercise based on my HR based tracker. Step based trackers are useless for calorie estimation, IMO. I have been on maintenance for a little over year. Nothing out there is perfect there is a bit of trail and error to figure out what works for you. Everything out there is an estimation of really and you have to treat it as such. There is no best way out there.

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