Carrying baby/toddler 6 hours = 2K calories?!

Bethany02086
Bethany02086 Posts: 7 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
So I carry my kids on my back a lot. Like over 6 hours today. I have a 1 yo and 2 special needs toddlers. I put in the exercise tracker "walking, carrying 15 lbs load or Infant" and it says I burned an extra 2K in calories?! Is that accurate? Never mind that the kids are all between 20 and 40 lbs
.. but that just seems absurdly large for just doing housework and such with a child on my back right?

Replies

  • Asher_Ethan
    Asher_Ethan Posts: 2,430 Member
    First of all - with the exercise calorie burn mfp gives you, it's usually only 50% accurate.

    Second - you say house work and such, was it constant moving 6 hours of house work? For me, daily house work would probably equal out to 500 calories extra.
    But I'm stopping to empty the dishwasher, fold laundry, organize toys. It's not constant.
  • Bethany02086
    Bethany02086 Posts: 7 Member
    It's pretty constant. I have 4 kids 6 and under, 2 with special needs. I rack up about 12000 steps a day WITHOUT going to the gym. More if I go to the gym.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    It's probably including your BMR, the number of calories you would have burned if you'd stayed on the couch for six hours.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    Asher_Ethan wrote: »
    First of all - with the exercise calorie burn mfp gives you, it's usually only 50% accurate.

    That's not true. I've always eaten back 100% of calories and lost weight as expected.
  • dougii
    dougii Posts: 679 Member
    A quick google search shows that a 150 pound person carrying an infant in a carrier on their person burns between 340 and 420 calories per hour of walking. When we are out with our grandson (around 20 lbs.) I do most of the carrying (with out a carrier) and can certainly attest to the extra calories burned. At a recent 3+ hour event, in crowds of people, I am estimating at my weight that I burned at least an additional 1500 cals. I can't even imagine how full your hands and days are right now with 4 under the age of 6. Just chasing them around keeping them out of trouble must be burning a lot of extra calories!!!
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,418 Member
    edited October 2018
    Yeah, for the daily stuff you do count that into your Activity Level here. "Active" would be where I would start.

    When I did backpacking, I went to calorielab and they had a, "backpacking/carrying 25 pounds," exercise, I just used that. http://calorielab.com/burned/ Type your weight in the box and click/choose, "Walking" and a sub-menu will come up with various choices. Then enter that into the Exercise tab here on this site. I always ate all the exercise calories and it worked for me.

    Whatever you decide to do use it consistently for a minimum amount of time like 4-6 weeks so you'll have a good trend for your data. Making a lot of changes kind of messes up the data and the experiment.

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