Logging YARDWORK? Anyone know how besides "Mowing Lawn Gener

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dannylives
dannylives Posts: 611
in Fitness and Exercise
I cant find anything besides "Mowing Lawn General." Is there anything else?

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  • rfcollins33
    rfcollins33 Posts: 630
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    I think there a "gardening" listed
  • bjclaywell
    bjclaywell Posts: 165 Member
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    I use "gardening" when I'm doing miscellaneous yard work, aside from mowing the lawn.
  • silkysly
    silkysly Posts: 701 Member
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    Try http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc to calculate your burn. :o)
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    I cant find anything besides "Mowing Lawn General." Is there anything else?

    If you are logging yard work don't forget to back out maintenance calories, as the total you will get is total calories, not extra calories burned, so if yo don't back them out you will double count them, once in your daily allowance and again when entering the activity (if you don't back them out).

    If your maintenance is 2200 cals that would be 1.53 cals/minute, which is not much but on low impact activities where you may only burn 4-5 cals/minute the maintenance cals make up a large % of the total burned.
  • dannylives
    dannylives Posts: 611
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    What do you mean, "Back them out?"
  • evilbanks
    evilbanks Posts: 166
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    Too much hassle man, I see yardwork as a normal part of the day / week; not a workout. I never count it as expenditure.
  • fbmandy55
    fbmandy55 Posts: 5,263 Member
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    Push mowing, raking, pulling weeds, weedeating... I count that as exercise!

    I only do yardwork maybe once or twice a month and it usually burns just as much if not more than my normal daily workout. Unless you do this daily and work for a lawn care company, why would you NOT log it?
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    What do you mean, "Back them out?"

    Well if you do yard work for 2 hours and burn 600 calories, you would have burned some had you not done the work and the 600 is the total burned over 2 hours, not the extra calories burned. So using my example above if your maintenance is 2200 cals you would back out 1.57 cals/min or 188 for the 2 hour workout, and you would only enter 412 (600-188) into MFP, as that is what you burned due to gardening as the 188 you would have burned had you done it or not.
  • dannylives
    dannylives Posts: 611
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    Okay, I get what you're saying, but doesn't MFP already calculate all that stuff? By the way, does "back out" mean to subtract?
  • CJunell
    CJunell Posts: 4
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    I use one that is just "Yard Work" at 200 calories an hour. I am not sure if I created it or not but I got the cal/hr from when I used another calorie tracking site and my nutritionist agreed with the amount. If you are trying to lose weight I probably wouldn't track it but once you hit your target weight or start fine tuning the diet you will want to track it. Reason being, 200 calories X 3 days a week = 600, so do that for 6 weeks and you have "burned" another pound and if you are not giving the body that fuel it will take it from your muscle mass.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    Okay, I get what you're saying, but doesn't MFP already calculate all that stuff? By the way, does "back out" mean to subtract?

    It should but I don't beleive so. As the MFP estimates are usually higher caloric burns than most HRMs and most HRMs don't back out maintenance calories. So by inference I assume that MFP does not back them out as their total is even higher than a source I know does not back them out.

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