Swimming, water and caffiene

Not quite sure of your questions here. You can input your exercise minutes to get MFP's estimate of calories burned, or as many of us do, link your device (I use a garmin 920XT) and let the data flow to MFP. I must admit that I'm curious about your swim volume, since burning 1500 calories equates to a long swim workout.

Regarding caffeine, if you get it from coffee, you could enter that today. I don't track caffeine, so no idea if any direct caffeine input is possible.

weluvmike69 wrote: »

Advanced/Expert Swimmer here; curious about My Own calorie-intake partnered with my own caffeine consumption. I'm Fairly certain that I Burn a Lot of calories during my swims, 1500-2000/per swim session and I swim 2x/week! I like this app bc I'm able to input my diet and among the Many restaurants that I visit, it takes into consideration my Water intake. I suppose that there *may* be an update coming to where I Could input my caffeine intake.

What sort of volume are you doing to burn that much? For me, swimming at around 1:30/100m it will easily take me around 5000m to get to around 1000 calories. All rough calculations off my Garmin. Are you trying to tell me you are doing 2hr swims, or 10km per session?

lorrpb wrote: »

glevinso wrote: »

weluvmike69 wrote: »

Advanced/Expert Swimmer here; curious about My Own calorie-intake partnered with my own caffeine consumption. I'm Fairly certain that I Burn a Lot of calories during my swims, 1500-2000/per swim session and I swim 2x/week! I like this app bc I'm able to input my diet and among the Many restaurants that I visit, it takes into consideration my Water intake. I suppose that there *may* be an update coming to where I Could input my caffeine intake.

What sort of volume are you doing to burn that much? For me, swimming at around 1:30/100m it will easily take me around 5000m to get to around 1000 calories. All rough calculations off my Garmin. Are you trying to tell me you are doing 2hr swims, or 10km per session?

OP self describes as "Advanced/Expert Swimmer " so that burn might be accurate.

I saw that... and question what that even means. Unless he is nearly Olympic-level competitive, I find it hard to believe he is burning 2000 calories per session simply due to the volume required. My rough calculations based on my own experience as a solid long distance swimmer (I can swim sub-hour at an Ironman) indicate it would take 10km to get to 2000 calories in a session. Someone swimming twice a week is not likely to have the endurance to swim 10km sessions.

I'm skeptical of what I burn per 45 minute lap sessions

GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »

There's an online calculator that gives reasonable estimates based on stroke, speed, distance etc. Might be worth a try to get an figure. Doesn't differentiate between kick and stroke sets though.

http://www.swimmingcalculator.com/swim_calories_calculator.php

I used that calculator plus this one: https://caloriesburnedhq.com/calories-burned-swimming/

I then found the equivalent in MFP's database. I swim breast stroke at 1 mph. Currently I am doing 1.17 miles (42 laps). One of the calculators gives me a burn of 680 calories and the other 772 calories. The closest I found in MFP was "Swimming, Leisurely, general" which gives me a burn of 739 calories. The breast stroke burns in MFP were just too high to be believable.

I go by distance rather than time. At 1 mph, every 3 laps takes 5 minutes. I am back in the pool after a year long break so I am actually swimming at a 65 minute mile instead of 60. I still do 5 minutes per 3 laps so I don't overestimate the burn while swimming slower. Every 5 minutes adds 53 calories to the burn. If I do the mile in 65 minutes rather than 60, there is no way I burned more calories. If anything, I may have burned fewer but not enough to worry about.

earlnabby wrote: »

The breast stroke burns in MFP were just too high to be believable.

I half every exercise measure MFP gives me for that reason and quarter the tennis ones knowing that I am more efficient than they seem to players are.

@earlnabby - Thanks for posting this hq calculator. It is more accurate. I think that the MFP calculator is using a formula for fairly proficient/ advanced swimmers who are covering a lot of distance in the exercise time. The breast stroke calorie burn is a good example. I do 400m of breaststroke in just under 9 min, and I'm working hard. I'm proficient, but I'm an older bird and I've slowed down because of breaststroker's knee. MFP gives me 99 calories for that time and the hq calculator gives me 82. But my bet is that if I was covering more distance in my 9 minutes (about 50m more) I'd be burning at least 99 calories. The OP here who says he is expert most likely burns a lot more than the MFP numbers for the same swim.

As for freestyle, MFP combines "light effort" with "moderate effort" which I don't think is a great idea. My usual pace for a freestyle workout is about 3km per 65 min. I always log that as "light/moderate effort" because it's not my fastest speed (fast, vigorous effort is the only next choice and I won't log that unless I'm doing sprints). The MFP calculator gives me 504 calories burned for light/moderate. If I logged it as "fast/vigorous" I would get 719. But the hq calculator gives me 630 - pretty much smack in the middle, which is pretty much how I feel about my swim - It's "moderate" effort. My guess it's probably what I'm actually burning based on my CICO (I'm losing more than the .5 lb a week I've set), so in my case MFP has been underestimating my calories burned for freestyle. However the one weird thing is that the hq calculator only gives 758 for double my distance in the hour, which at 6km an hour I'd be doing a race pace the whole time and I think I'd be burning a lot more.

If the OP is an advanced swimmer and covering 5 or 6km an hour then I'm pretty sure his burns are close to 1000 an hour. Although I'm not sure what happens when you add zoomers into the equation. They make you work harder on your kick but they also take you further in your distance.

weluvmike69 wrote: »

lorrpb wrote: »

glevinso wrote: »

weluvmike69 wrote: »

Advanced/Expert Swimmer here; curious about My Own calorie-intake partnered with my own caffeine consumption. I'm Fairly certain that I Burn a Lot of calories during my swims, 1500-2000/per swim session and I swim 2x/week! I like this app bc I'm able to input my diet and among the Many restaurants that I visit, it takes into consideration my Water intake. I suppose that there *may* be an update coming to where I Could input my caffeine intake.

What sort of volume are you doing to burn that much? For me, swimming at around 1:30/100m it will easily take me around 5000m to get to around 1000 calories. All rough calculations off my Garmin. Are you trying to tell me you are doing 2hr swims, or 10km per session?

OP self describes as "Advanced/Expert Swimmer " so that burn might be accurate.

-~2 hour swims; every stroke with Kick/fins-Zoomers plus kickboard to Target abs. I sense some Skepticism in regard to my OG calorie burn-estimation. Just an estimation; judging from my Exhaustion level. Perhaps is just a Gross Over-Estimation though. Expert swimmer though, plus the Fins Help Isolate my abdominal muscles.

If you're really expert/advanced, that indicates a level of skill and technique involved to make swimming easier. Coupled with adaptation to the exercise, and the fact that fins, and zoomers actually make it easier to get more speed, I think you're grossly over estimating calorie burn. I was a competitive swimmer in college, and my burn would barely get that high with two 2-3 hour sessions per day swimming 100yrds at 1:30 or under. If you really want to work your abs while swimming, try butterfly kicking on your back in stream line for 200 yds without fins.

Skipjack66 wrote: »

If the OP is an advanced swimmer and covering 5 or 6km an hour then I'm pretty sure his burns are close to 1000 an hour. Although I'm not sure what happens when you add zoomers into the equation. They make you work harder on your kick but they also take you further in your distance.

Actually, I'd argue less, as the OP clearly indicates that he is using aids (Kickboard and fins). Kickboards are great for isolating the kick movements to build leg strength and improve kick performance, but it will actually reduce the calorie burn by at least half. Though, an expert swimmer it's probably more since most of the work and strength in swimming comes from the upper body strokes rather then the kicks.

While the fins don't cut the calorie burn down, they do artificially inflate the distance and speed one can cover in a specific time without actually increasing calorie burn all that much. Which makes pretty much ALL the calorie calculators useless.

I usually cut the calcultor estimates in half for any time spent using aides (Fins, paddles, kickboards and pull bouys).

weluvmike69 wrote: »

however, bc I'm an 'Expert' it is My contention that I burn a Tremendous amount of calories!

Actually, your contention would be misguided as "expert" in anything tends to reduce calorie burns as strokes and kicks become more efficient and you body becomes accustomed to workouts. Though the actual difference between beginner burns and expert burns is pretty minimal to not be worth stressing about.

If you are really curious about you actual calorie burn, rather then "perceived" (which is very fallible), keep track of the total distance swam and use the above calculator. I swim a mile 4 days a week in about 45 mins. Since about a fifth of the workout uses training aides (Who doesn't love the ab work of a flutter kick!), I calculate .8 miles at full calorie count and .2 miles at half calorie count. At 215 lbs, this gives me a solid 550 cals burned for a 45 min workout.

That said, depending on your current weight, I can easily see 1500 calories for a solid 2 hr workout if it's primarily aid free and probably even slightly higher then 2000 cals for a 3hr workout. But if your goal is to lose weight, as your profile suggests, then being more accurate then what you perceive is pretty important.