How accurate is the calories burned on here?

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pinkladyslippers89
pinkladyslippers89 Posts: 6 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
My pedometer says 317 calories burned, but on here it only says 200. That doesn't sound right for a 3 mile walk at a moderate pace.

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  • pinkladyslippers89
    pinkladyslippers89 Posts: 6 Member
    edited July 2016
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    3.61 miles to be exact.
  • Hoohoohaa
    Hoohoohaa Posts: 48 Member
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    Personally, I don't trust them from any source. I don't eat back any exercise calories since I have them already figured in to my calorie count, though. MFP and Fitbit I use to compare movement day to day.
  • cdahl383
    cdahl383 Posts: 726 Member
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    Might vary due to speed and resistance. MFP has different values for walking 2.0mph, 2.5mph, 3.5mph...3.5mph uphill, etc. Maybe you typed in 2.0mph when you were really doing 3.0-3.5mph?
  • dubird
    dubird Posts: 1,849 Member
    edited July 2016
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    MFP tends to vastly over-estimate your calories burned. In fact, may online tools do because they don't have you input your stats. They're working from a general baseline to calculate your calories burned, and if you're not in that baseline, it won't be accurate. General advice here is to only eat back half of what MFP says you've burned.

    Devices like a Fitbit that include a heart rate monitor are more accurate, but nothing is 100%. If you want to be as accurate as possible, get a device with a HRM that you can enter your personal stats on your body (and can update it as needed), or just get a simple HRM and do the math yourself. I'm lazy and suck at math, so I opted for choice 1. ^_^;
  • cdahl383
    cdahl383 Posts: 726 Member
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    You can also just base it off of your TDEE and activity level if you don't like the method used on MFP. I just eat 80% of my TDEE which is based on 3-5 hours of moderate exercise per week and it seems to work pretty well. I just thought that was easier than how MFP calculates it. Either way will get you where you need to be.

    You're better off overestimating your calories eaten and underestimating your calories burned during exercise when you're not able to track things right down to an exact number.
  • pinkladyslippers89
    pinkladyslippers89 Posts: 6 Member
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    Yeah it wasn't a flat surface and my pedometer did an average speed of 3.0 so I probably walked between 3.0 and 3.5. I said I was lightly active and it has me at a 1400 calorie amount. I do a class boot camp 3 times a week and generally walk daily. I don't do much after though and I am not on my feet all day. So I think they factored it in.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,867 Member
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    MFP does not factor in any exercise when it gives you your calories to eat.

    Sedentary is an activity factor of BMR x 1.25 and lightly active BMR x 1.4.

    In general you can probably think of it like this: the first 35 to 50 minutes of activity in your day (3500 to 5000 steps) are included in the sedentary budget. Lightly active bumps this up to between 5000 and 8000 steps.

    If you are set as lightly active and are otherwise average (don't stand all day at work for example) and step between 5000 and 8000 steps a day and that's all you do, you should probably NOT add anything to your exercise.

    However if you do average those 5000 to 8000 steps a day and then do something beyond that, you should enter it as exercise and eat back the net exercise calories so as to maintain your stated deficit.

    Otherwise you're just increasing your deficit which is not always a good thing.

    After a few weeks you should compare your estimated deficit to your rate of loss and figure out how well things are working and make adjustments accordingly.

    Remember that compliance and continuing in the right direction is much more important than speed of loss. Make life easier on you by picking a reasonable deficit!

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