What is the best way to estimate calories burned walking? Fitbit, MFP, MMW, etc?
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Verity1111 wrote: »
I used the same number from the beginning to the end of my 25 kg weight loss.
I prefer to estimate a bit low when it comes to exercise.1 -
I think the main thing is are you losing weight? I have walkmeter app. It is very good I walk 3 mph 70 minutes and cover just over 3 miles and it says I burn 340 calories..... I don't eat all of these back ever at the most 200 are eaten back if I am particularly hungry. Sometimes I eat none back. I have always lost weight and this is my only form of exercise. I put in to lose 1.5 per week and I am averaging 1.2 lb wt loss per week.0
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thielke2015 wrote: »I think the main thing is are you losing weight? I have walkmeter app. It is very good I walk 3 mph 70 minutes and cover just over 3 miles and it says I burn 340 calories..... I don't eat all of these back ever at the most 200 are eaten back if I am particularly hungry. Sometimes I eat none back. I have always lost weight and this is my only form of exercise. I put in to lose 1.5 per week and I am averaging 1.2 lb wt loss per week.
Thanks for the information! Are you a very different weight than I am though because it would vary? 340 seemed about right to me. I estimated 400 which is close. Thanks for letting me know. 0 -
To me, 400 calories burned in a 5 km walk seems really high.
Even at my highest weight, I didn't estimate that much.
I use MFP and select the "Walking, 12.5 mins per km, mod. pace" choice, then round down the time I spend walking. So if I'm actually walking for 57 min, I'll enter 50 or maybe 55 min.0 -
To me, 400 calories burned in a 5 km walk seems really high.
Even at my highest weight, I didn't estimate that much.
I use MFP and select the "Walking, 12.5 mins per km, mod. pace" choice, then round down the time I spend walking. So if I'm actually walking for 57 min, I'll enter 50 or maybe 55 min.
MFP for me sometimes seems to estimate very low. But again it depends on height which I dont think MFP incorporates and HR and so on. I never estimate that low and I was losing 3.5lbs per week for 6 weeks. Now I have upped my calories and I still lose at least 1lb per week but Im down 30-35 so far. I used to log about 100calories burned for a .8 mile walk or 200calories if I walked there and back and it always worked fine.0 -
To me, 400 calories burned in a 5 km walk seems really high.
When I was at my heaviest, a bit more than the originator, I was on about 200 for that distance walking, about 400 running it.
What's skewing the results are a number of factors, including the HR input being used.
With the originator eating at 1200 Cal's net I can understand the desire to attribute more energy expenditure to this. Given the rate of loss described I don't thing a massive overestimation of exercise calories is all that material at the moment.1 -
MeanderingMammal wrote: »Verity1111 wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »0.3*bodyweight in lbs per mile, so c60 Cal's per mile.
That gives you c210 calories.
That seems incredibly off. It doesn't take into account height or fitness level. You should think of height because a short person 5'0" needs to put a lot more energy in than say someone who is 6'0".
The key points are your body mass and the distance you travelled. Height and fitness levels are immaterial.
Walking doesn't burn a huge amount of energy.
Fwiw your HR based measurements are confusing the issue. HR isn't a reliable proxy for calorie expenditure at low levels of intensity.
As a person who is less than 5 foot I could not disagree with you more. Do you know how many extra steps I have to take to walk a mile compared to someone who is 6 foot? The effort I need to put in to walk the same distance is greater, therefore more calories would be burned. You don't need scientific research to figure this out.You just need to be short trying to keep up with someone much taller than you to know this.5 -
I think of walking as more of an "activity" than a scientific calculation. There are many things that are unknown to whatever is calculating, hills, stride length, speed etc. Although you are burning something walking. I just let fitbit calc the activity and use Runtastic to figure my running burn and let it work itself out.0
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It depends on body mass. She'll burn fewer calories as she shrinks.
I've been maintaining for over 5 years at between 135-140 pounds and I burn about 100 calories per mile, and I weigh a lot less than the OP. But then again, my walks aren't meandering on flat sidewalks. I hike at a brisk pace on hilly trails and get my heart rate up. I eat all my exercise calories back and I've managed to maintain for years, so I guess I can't be that far off. I think if OP is getting her heart rate up and really working, that's NOT low intensity. She could actually be burning a good amount of calories. She already has a big deficit. It won't hurt to try estimating calories at that mid-range point. If she doesn't lose she can drop it down.1 -
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Based on your BMR you'd have burned ~80 calories if you had taken a nap instead of a walk. During cardio your burn per minute would increase of course. Going w/ the middle range of 350-ish seems the safest. 10 cals per minute seems extreme. 5 cals per minute does not in my opinion. Considering your weight, the truth could even be a little higher. But if you go with the 350 you can judge your results for the next 4-6 weeks. If you're losing faster than expected, you'll know your cardio burn rate is likely higher.
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Lillymoo01 wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »Verity1111 wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »0.3*bodyweight in lbs per mile, so c60 Cal's per mile.
That gives you c210 calories.
That seems incredibly off. It doesn't take into account height or fitness level. You should think of height because a short person 5'0" needs to put a lot more energy in than say someone who is 6'0".
The key points are your body mass and the distance you travelled. Height and fitness levels are immaterial.
Walking doesn't burn a huge amount of energy.
Fwiw your HR based measurements are confusing the issue. HR isn't a reliable proxy for calorie expenditure at low levels of intensity.
As a person who is less than 5 foot I could not disagree with you more. Do you know how many extra steps I have to take to walk a mile compared to someone who is 6 foot? The effort I need to put in to walk the same distance is greater, therefore more calories would be burned. You don't need scientific research to figure this out.You just need to be short trying to keep up with someone much taller than you to know this.
It's worth thinking about the physics here. Energy is required to move a mass through space. The energy required doesn't vary depending on the shape of that mass, or the speed that the mass is moving (at the speeds we're talking about).
The higher cadence that you're referring to isn't moving you a greater distance. A mile is a mile regardless of how many steps you take to cover it.
What is affected by leg length and bodily centre of gravity is walking efficiency, which can make a small difference to energy consumption. That's driven by pace. As an example the pace that my partner walks comfortably at is somewhat slower than my comfortable pace. Partly that's biomechanical and partly adaptation. So for her to keep up with me the efficiency reduction plays in, and equally for me to slow down to her pace causes inefficiency in my gait. To appreciate the materiality of that it's worth looking at the Metabolic Equivalencies and playing with those. Essentially it's not all that material, a single figure percentage effect on calorie expenditure.
What I think is highly likely with the originator is that she's not calibrated her FitBit to her actual leg length, so it assumes she's walked further than she has.
It's pretty basic physics really.0 -
scorpio516 wrote: »
I hit about 180lbs at my peak and went with about 200 cal/hour walking. If I had been running at a pretty good pace for an hour, I might have gone with 400 cal, but I wasn't running at all then.
I had a look yesterday and noticed that MFP has me at about 160 cal/hour for walking now. That's OK. For me, it works better to be realistically low than to overestimate things.
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Are you able to get a HR monitor? Those are usually the most accurate.1
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roamingtiger wrote: »Are you able to get a HR monitor? Those are usually the most accurate.
Read the whole thread - you missed some excellent posts about why that is NOT true.1 -
I have used various methods over the two years I've been losing weight. They all work when you adjust them according to how the scale performs. It's all really just guessing.
I currently use a fitbit that I've tweaked to be reliable.
I will say this. I have consistently burned more than that Runner's World calculation posted upthread, but I walk rather briskly. Perhaps that calculation is meant for a different pace? I don't know.1 -
Excellent studies - going to use that.
With so many people doing so much walking with activity trackers (sadly sometimes to the detriment of a better workout because they just want steps), that would be easy for Fitbit to incorporate.
For a slow 30 min dog walk the difference in accuracy doesn't matter.
For your 20K steps/day people - that could be significant if no other intense workouts being done, or even with.
The Fitbit uses the other most recent formula's already, but they know height, so improvement would be easy.
But still, that potential improvement could be thrown off by an incorrect stride length being used, and wrong distance calculated.
Or hills or extra weight carried.
Or, using HR-based calorie burn when step-based would be better, because HR-based down at bottom of the exercise range loses accuracy potential too.1 -
Lillymoo01 wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »Verity1111 wrote: »MeanderingMammal wrote: »0.3*bodyweight in lbs per mile, so c60 Cal's per mile.
That gives you c210 calories.
That seems incredibly off. It doesn't take into account height or fitness level. You should think of height because a short person 5'0" needs to put a lot more energy in than say someone who is 6'0".
The key points are your body mass and the distance you travelled. Height and fitness levels are immaterial.
Walking doesn't burn a huge amount of energy.
Fwiw your HR based measurements are confusing the issue. HR isn't a reliable proxy for calorie expenditure at low levels of intensity.
As a person who is less than 5 foot I could not disagree with you more. Do you know how many extra steps I have to take to walk a mile compared to someone who is 6 foot? The effort I need to put in to walk the same distance is greater, therefore more calories would be burned. You don't need scientific research to figure this out.You just need to be short trying to keep up with someone much taller than you to know this.
This is also scientifically proven now from the conclusions of multiple studies.0 -
It depends on body mass. She'll burn fewer calories as she shrinks.
I've been maintaining for over 5 years at between 135-140 pounds and I burn about 100 calories per mile, and I weigh a lot less than the OP. But then again, my walks aren't meandering on flat sidewalks. I hike at a brisk pace on hilly trails and get my heart rate up. I eat all my exercise calories back and I've managed to maintain for years, so I guess I can't be that far off. I think if OP is getting her heart rate up and really working, that's NOT low intensity. She could actually be burning a good amount of calories. She already has a big deficit. It won't hurt to try estimating calories at that mid-range point. If she doesn't lose she can drop it down.
That is the conclusion I ended up coming to on my own so I agree. Thank you. And I burn about 100 cal per mile from what my experience and weight loss shows but again I am much heavier so I might burn that without the hills etc. Originally I wasn't thinking to just take the shorter walk and multiple it to get what I burned I was too tired (mentally) to think about it lol. It didn't cross my mind for some reason. 0 -
StaciMarie1974 wrote: »Based on your BMR you'd have burned ~80 calories if you had taken a nap instead of a walk. During cardio your burn per minute would increase of course. Going w/ the middle range of 350-ish seems the safest. 10 cals per minute seems extreme. 5 cals per minute does not in my opinion. Considering your weight, the truth could even be a little higher. But if you go with the 350 you can judge your results for the next 4-6 weeks. If you're losing faster than expected, you'll know your cardio burn rate is likely higher.
Thank you! 350 sounds reasonable too. I went with 400 originally but I mean 50 cal difference isnt a big deal to me so I could go either way. Thanks for the help. 0
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