calories burned according to MFP

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CristinaAnne03
CristinaAnne03 Posts: 22 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I used to have a HRM that I used to log my calories burned for my exercise on MFP, I would manually enter the activity and amount burned according to my polar HRM w/ the strap. I recently did a small bulk, so I wasn't really paying attention as much to my intake since I was looking to gain weight. Now that I am cutting and on my last 5-7lbs: I can't find my HRM :neutral: So I was thinking about just using the pre logged exercises that MFP provides and I'll just time myself during my workouts to enter that manually.

How accurate have you all discovered MFP calorie calculations to be?

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  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,868 Member
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    With the exception of a few things, not very. What kind of exercise? Running and walking are pretty easy to figure out.
  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
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    As accurate as my HRM is...
  • mmapags
    mmapags Posts: 8,934 Member
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    Neither MFPs database or your HRM are dead accurate. For the HRM, it really depends on what type of exercise you are doing. They are designed specifically for steady state cardio. So, if doing that, they have the best chance of being reasonable accurate. For other kinds of exercise, not so much.

    Many feel, including me, that MFPs burn counts are off to the high side. Start with 50% or 75% of the burn count and keep good data on your burns, intake and weight. After 4 to 6 weeks adjust based on your actual data. That the only thing that will give you the best accuracy.
  • CristinaAnne03
    CristinaAnne03 Posts: 22 Member
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    Well when I was using it a lot I was more so doing a lot of aerobic exercises. I shifted to weight training when I started bulking, so I guess it wouldn't be good for that lol! normally if I do cardio in the gym a lot of the machines watch your heart rate (the newer machines) and I go off of that and minus some. My weight training I go about it for an hour, so I normally chalk it up to 100-110...it normally depends on if I am doing legs or not that day because my HR skyrockets when I do legs.

    Thanks!
  • CristinaAnne03
    CristinaAnne03 Posts: 22 Member
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    thank you! I really appreciated that answer. Even after years of doing this it is so easy to get caught up in it!

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