Do you ever comment on unrealistic logging by friends?

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Replies

  • enterdanger
    enterdanger Posts: 2,447 Member
    I stay out of it unless they specifically ask me the age old "Why am I not losing weight?" Then I might point out their calorie burns look a little suspect.
  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
    jjpptt2 wrote: »
    How does one decide what is unrealistic and what isn't? This whole idea of this conversion seems a bit presumptuous to me.

    Calorie burns that would go over 1000 per hour for moderately intense (and sometimes not even intense) exercise. 150+ calories per mile for miles computed from daily steps. My original question was sincere, not wanting to ridicule people. I see posted activity that would wipe out a daily deficit of 500 calories sometimes. It is entirely possible that some of these people don't know.

    I've done that before.. 1000 cals (ish) for an hour of cycling, moderate or whatever the equivalent is. It's because it was auto-logged when my garmin synced... but there was nothing moderate about it that ride, I promise you.

    And that was more my point. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of hugely erroneous entries made every single day. But I also think that there are just as many (if not more) variables, unknowns, variations, etc that reading a simple diary entry and assuming it's wrong is just as likely to be arrogant and unhelpful as it is considerate and beneficial.

    But that's me, and I don't people very well... so maybe this is just something else I'm overly jaded about.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    jjpptt2 wrote: »
    How does one decide what is unrealistic and what isn't? This whole idea of this conversion seems a bit presumptuous to me.

    Using one's experience it's sometimes painfully obvious that calorie burns are massively exaggerated. For example when you see an unfit newbie to cycling logging rates and quantities of calorie burns that would do a Tour de France rider proud.

    Rather than let someone fail by themselves isn't it more friendly to offer some advice?
    "A wise man learns from their mistakes, a clever man learns from the mistakes of others."
  • Kathryn247
    Kathryn247 Posts: 570 Member
    It depends - for someone who's new and seems friendly, I'll say something like:
    "Nice workout - how are you measuring your calorie burn? It seems kind of high, and a lot of calorie burn estimators tend to way overestimate. If you don't get the results you expect on the scale you may want to try a different calculator."
    And I leave it at that. People have been happy to get the feedback.
    If it's someone who's been on forever and records 1000 calories for 30 minutes of "Housekeeping, light, doing the dishes," I don't comment.
  • Duck_Puddle
    Duck_Puddle Posts: 3,224 Member
    annaskiski wrote: »
    I saw someone log 1000 calories for 'mowing the lawn'.

    But, nope, not my business.

    I have a guy who does that. He’s about 8 feet tall, and is mowing a little over an acre with a push mower.
  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    Sometimes I see things in my news feed and think about trying to politely say there is no way in he11 you burned that many calories in that much time doing that activity, but I never do. If it was an IRL friend, I would say something as politely as I could. Here, I just shake my head and ignore it. Sometimes I wonder if I should say something; maybe they really have no idea. OTOH, I don't want to come across as a know it all jerk.

    Nope. Not my place to get into a debate about someone's habits. Do I think the guy who burns 20 calories a minute for the entire duration of his several hours workout is overestimating his burn? Yep. Do I say anything? Nope. I also have a MFP friend who engaged in a 29 day water fast. Was supposed to be 30. Couldn't watch that happen. So destructive. But people were cheering her on. I couldn't. But I didn't dis her, either.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
    I don't have any friends and no I would not. It's not my business or my concern.
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    edited October 2018
    jjpptt2 wrote: »
    jjpptt2 wrote: »
    How does one decide what is unrealistic and what isn't? This whole idea of this conversion seems a bit presumptuous to me.

    Calorie burns that would go over 1000 per hour for moderately intense (and sometimes not even intense) exercise. 150+ calories per mile for miles computed from daily steps. My original question was sincere, not wanting to ridicule people. I see posted activity that would wipe out a daily deficit of 500 calories sometimes. It is entirely possible that some of these people don't know.

    I've done that before.. 1000 cals (ish) for an hour of cycling, moderate or whatever the equivalent is. It's because it was auto-logged when my garmin synced... but there was nothing moderate about it that ride, I promise you.

    And that was more my point. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of hugely erroneous entries made every single day. But I also think that there are just as many (if not more) variables, unknowns, variations, etc that reading a simple diary entry and assuming it's wrong is just as likely to be arrogant and unhelpful as it is considerate and beneficial.

    But that's me, and I don't people very well... so maybe this is just something else I'm overly jaded about.

    The Mayo clinic compiled a big list of exercise burns for activities and for a person weighing 200 pounds, the two activities they found that were over 1,000 calories per hour were running 8 miles in an hour and, believe it or not, jumping rope. I think there are more that might average that or higher for bursts. I would think racing cyclists doing a climb might burn 300 in 15 minutes, but that's an exertion level that would be difficult to keep doing for an hour. Maybe pro racers could, but I am not talking about elite athletes.

    I do get the point a lot of people made about auto logged activities though. I had forgotten that the post "sticks" even when you correct the calories. Machines which seem to have enough info to come close are disappointing in their accuracy also. I did an hour on the ARCTrainer this morning with resistance at 47 and elevation only at 6. I entered my weight accurately as 157. It gifted me with ~800 calories. I logged 375.
  • yukfoo
    yukfoo Posts: 871 Member
    edited October 2018
    I echo the "It's none of my business" philosophy. People are subject to human emotions. Like not accurately logging every morsel we eat so the log stays under daily allowances. We fool ourselves a little all the time. If it gets you through another day, then good on you. The truth is is an unblinking eye. The mirror/ scale will be our undoing.
  • jesstifiable
    jesstifiable Posts: 1 Member
    One of my "friends" adjusted their calorie limit by thousands of calories everyday so it always said they were under their calorie limit for the day on people's walls. I just unfriended them. That kind of delusion and/or trickery is the enemy of weight loss and made me feel a bit weird. You can't control what people do, you only control what you do and I am not gonna bust people I barely know for being dishonest, that's a bad time.

    I don't get why people waste time doing things like this? If they want weight loss then it all comes back to being really honest with yourself and not caring what others think. I just don't get this competitive mentality, especially when it is based on a delusion. We get further lifting one another up then undermining one another. I totally would have unfriended that person as well.

  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,257 Member
    Just looking at my own behavior I'm a lazy logger and primarily concerned with calories, then protein. If I know I'm logging an item not in my database ~300 calories and I'm logging something similar I'll just add a variable so it amounts to an added 300 calories. For activity I keep it simple and just log from the Fitbit or Polar, but I can imagine people questioning the accuracy of this.