how do i know how many calories i burned from working out

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butterflyflower1984
butterflyflower1984 Posts: 2 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
i do these little exercises i find on google along with some other workout videos on youtube, how do i determine how many calories i burned?

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  • Reaverie
    Reaverie Posts: 405 Member
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    google them? What kind of little exercises? Like odd stuff no one has documented? Or traditional stuff like pinwheels and squats and leg lifts..etc? How many minutes do you work out for? Are you slow and steady or does it get intense? Do you break a sweat? How much do you weigh? I like to estimate calories burned on the low side and calories eaten on the high side just to make sure. I found this online.

    https://www.duluthymca.org/sites/default/files/How Many Calories You Burn in 30 Minutes.pdf
  • SingingSingleTracker
    SingingSingleTracker Posts: 1,866 Member
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    butterflyflower1984 wrote: »
    i do these little exercises i find on google along with some other workout videos on youtube, how do i determine how many calories i burned?

    Most everything will be a guesstimate. Even if you use a HR monitor, plug in your data (age, weight, height, gender) - gizmo's will report back some sort of guesstimate based on their algorithms. We all have different heart rates (or at least enough +/- from the mean) that may have the reading closer to the mean than what we might be.

    It starts to get closer on machines or bikes that have a power meter to measure the effort (Watts) that, when combined with the heart rate, are able to get a closer to more accurate guesstimate that is right in the ball park.

    Harvard has an excellent chart that covers three different weights, different intensities, and a lot of activities here:

    http://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities

  • sbrandt37
    sbrandt37 Posts: 403 Member
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    SingingSingleTracker wrote: »
    Most everything will be a guesstimate.

    What they said. Find something similar in the MFP database--maybe calisthenics--and use that.

  • ntnunk
    ntnunk Posts: 936 Member
    edited January 2017
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    SingingSingleTracker wrote: »
    butterflyflower1984 wrote: »
    i do these little exercises i find on google along with some other workout videos on youtube, how do i determine how many calories i burned?

    Most everything will be a guesstimate. Even if you use a HR monitor, plug in your data (age, weight, height, gender) - gizmo's will report back some sort of guesstimate based on their algorithms. We all have different heart rates (or at least enough +/- from the mean) that may have the reading closer to the mean than what we might be.

    It starts to get closer on machines or bikes that have a power meter to measure the effort (Watts) that, when combined with the heart rate, are able to get a closer to more accurate guesstimate that is right in the ball park.

    Harvard has an excellent chart that covers three different weights, different intensities, and a lot of activities here:

    http://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities

    ^^ This.

    The very first thing you need to understand is that everything everything everything is a educated (to one degree or another) guess. Even with bikes/rowing machines/etc that have power measures. These can be very accurate (assuming they are calibrated and zeroed), but they only tell part of the story. They can measure the amount of power you generated into the device and from that very accurately calculate the calories required to generate that power, but they they only take into account power generated into the device. Respiration, non-power-generating movement, etc all generate calorie burn not seen by the device.

    The upshot of all this is that you can only ever really guess. Don't take calorie numbers from anywhere as gospel. This is especially true of gym treadmills and the like. First, they are rarely (never) calibrated, and second, my cynical nature says "If I make a treadmill and when you finish a 30 minute run it tells you you burned 1,000 calories while my competitor's treadmill says you only burned 600, which one are you going to feel more inclined to like?"

    And this doesn't even get into the quagmire of strength training calorie burns. Too many variables to even discuss there. Again, a guess. Nothing more.
  • butterflyflower1984
    butterflyflower1984 Posts: 2 Member
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    Reaverie wrote: »
    google them? What kind of little exercises? Like odd stuff no one has documented? Or traditional stuff like pinwheels and squats and leg lifts..etc? How many minutes do you work out for? Are you slow and steady or does it get intense? Do you break a sweat? How much do you weigh? I like to estimate calories burned on the low side and calories eaten on the high side just to make sure. I found this online.

    https://www.duluthymca.org/sites/default/files/How Many Calories You Burn in 30 Minutes.pdf

    sorry, i was talking about stuff like this
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  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 24,871 Member
    edited January 2017
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    How long does that take you?


    If it were me, I'd probably go with this choice: "Calisthenics, home, light/moderate effort"
  • chelseameilleur
    chelseameilleur Posts: 1 Member
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    Download my fitness pal app punch in the workout you are doing and the time you spent on the workout it tells you the calories burned
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    Machka9 wrote: »
    How long does that take you?


    If it were me, I'd probably go with this choice: "Calisthenics, home, light/moderate effort"

    I'd go with this
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
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    Assuming each of the above examples took me, between say 5-10mins to complete, at a hard effort I might burn maybe 50 calories of which some will just be daily BMR anyway.
    Your burn will depend entirely on your weight, your effort level, your fitness level and how long you do these exercises for. The advice to enter it as light callisthenics will cover off the most critical of these variants so long as you measure the duration you're working for.

    If you're goal is weight loss I would be very careful not to eat back these calories as it's so easy to already underestimate your consumption by 50 calories that one circuit of the above will simply just compensate for that.

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