Do you ever comment on unrealistic logging by friends?
Replies
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It's possible the estimated calories burned is incorrect.
I just started using this a couple days ago: my new doc recommended it to track calories and activity.
I question some of the calories burned; For example I went bow hunting yesterday; I had a total of 1 hour walking approximately 1/3 mile from my vehicle to and from my hunting spot, 4 hours standing and sitting. When I chose hunting general, it said I burned like 2,700 calories!!! Really!?
There's no way I would burn that many in four hours of waiting, even if I was pushing game for others I'd question the amount.
Mind you I'm stationary, hunting 100 - 150 lb white tail deer and black bear not 1000+ lb moose, so even if I had to drag anything out would that be accurate? BTW I went home without any fresh lean protein
If so then I'm a calorie burning machine LOL.1 -
Unless a person is asking for help I get a giggle and move on as it is really none of my business. That being said, some might scratch their heads with my diary at times because I do what works for me.
I sync Map My Walk here so my walks are automatically synced. I also have Pacer synced. I know that Pacer gives me a much more accurate calorie count but like Map My Walk logged so I have a record on here of how much I have walked in a day. When I go for a walk I just do a quick add of the calories burned in my food diary and at the end of the day edit my walks to 1 calorie and delete the quick adds. It works for me but could leave some people perplexed if they look at my diary during the day.0 -
I log every lifting session as 45 minutes of strength training. I even call some heavy landscaping work 45 minutes of strength training. I do the same for a 3 hour dirtdining (motorcycle) session. I know none of those are 275 cals (the dirt biking and landscaping may be more, the lifting less). I set my TDEE one setting lower than it actually is, and log everything as 45 min strength training because it splits the difference between the 2 TDEE settings. So far, I have been right on target with my cal calculations for 3 months.
Don't be so quick to judge. Sometimes people are more on point than your assumptions would give them credit for.3 -
I saw on a news report this morning that they did some testing and found that people watching horror movies burned an average of 138 more calories than their normal sedentary burn rate. I really hope no tax dollars went toward that study.3
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wolftrucking08 wrote: »It's possible the estimated calories burned is incorrect.
I just started using this a couple days ago: my new doc recommended it to track calories and activity.
I question some of the calories burned; For example I went bow hunting yesterday; I had a total of 1 hour walking approximately 1/3 mile from my vehicle to and from my hunting spot, 4 hours standing and sitting. When I chose hunting general, it said I burned like 2,700 calories!!! Really!?
There's no way I would burn that many in four hours of waiting, even if I was pushing game for others I'd question the amount.
Mind you I'm stationary, hunting 100 - 150 lb white tail deer and black bear not 1000+ lb moose, so even if I had to drag anything out would that be accurate? BTW I went home without any fresh lean protein
If so then I'm a calorie burning machine LOL.
It took an hour to go 1/3 mile?!
When I hunt, I prefer moving... obviously the burn you see is based on if you were hiking. If you are heavy enough, 5 hours of hiking might get close to that many calories.3 -
I turned off the automatic post for exercise from my Apple Watch.
Why? Pokémon Go. It’ll submit every time I turn it on as walking, 2.0. I’d flood people’s feeds with it.
Pair that with after the watch update it seems much more generous on calorie burn, I’ve been pretty suspicious of any active calories.
So, when I see it from other people I don’t judge because I know my own exercise logs look extremely weird. As long as they’re meeting their goals and happy, that’s good enough for me0 -
No.
Unless they specifically asked for my opinion.
This is an educational process for many of us. If they are truly serious about becoming a healthy weight, they will learn.5 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »CarvedTones 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.
This annoys me, and I've ranted about it before. MFP decides how to label the intensity just purely on your average speed. So the harder a ride is, the easier MFP says it was. Do hill repeats and it says leisurely cycling. Even when the data you sync has the intensity factor in it. Just riding around...
I don’t have an indoor trainer-just a plain regular exercise bike. So I have to manually enter the distance - but not until after Garmin has altready synced my leisurely 0mph ride. It already has my cycling vo2max as “did you actually pedal?”. Clearly, Garmin is unimpressed with my cycling prowess.
I love it!
I'm thinking about getting rollers. Last November it rained every day and I didn't want to deal with it in the cold and dark, and I don't think any of that will be any different this year.
Rollers scare me. I'm probably the only person who would crash her bike in her own basement while literally at a standstill. We have Kickrs and Zwift. Makes it a little like playing a video game when we're stuck cycling inside.1 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Part of the issue is with the MFP calorie estimators for exercise, which seem to be in active conflict with their activity multipliers. For instance, lets take a 30 year old, 5'4, 160 pound woman. BMR would be 1431, which means that if someone defined themselves as Sedentary, they would have a normal burn of 1717. Now lets say that person does house cleaning for a living. They have 2 options. They could choose their activity level as either "active" or "highly active", which would give them another 500-700 calories per day of budgeting. Or they could log 480 minutes of "Cleaning, light, moderate effort", which would likely say that they burned about 3x the calories than if they included that as part of their activity level.
So I think a big issue with calorie logging is that logging basic household activities greatly overestimates the number of calories burned. Exercise is not meant to be done for hours. If a person finds themselves doing hours of a life related exercise on the regular, they should raise their activity level, rather than logging it as exercise. Exercise should be for specific acts of exercise outside of normal daily activity.
Huh? Why not? And who didn't mean for us to exercise for hours?
Yesterday I spent about 3.5 hours riding my bike up and down Sherman Pass. The day before I rode Loup Loup Pass, which coincidentally also took me about 3.5 hours. I work as a software engineer so sedentary is the correct activity level. Today it's stormy and the weekday riding is over.
This is taking one sentence of a long post out of the context that was in the rest of the post. I was referring to basic daily activity that is recorded as exercise on the site, greatly overexaggerating the number of calories burned. Of course you can do real exercise for hours. But the exercise logging tool isn't effective for that for most people. Sure if you are marathon training or a distance cycler or an elite athlete, then the burn amounts may be more accurate. But a very small percentage of people ever burn thousands of calories from exercise a day. Which is a number that MFP will tell people if they log their basic activity as exercise.1 -
I did comment once when a co-worker told me he burned off the Snickers bar he just ate by walking the stairs of our 5 story building "up and down, twice".
I just said, "well, I typically burn about 200 calories running for a half hour". He didn't believe me, and went and googled 'calorie burns'.
Lets just say that he found it eye-opening.
I guess people really just don't know...6 -
My MFP is synced for step count and it offers in return a ridiculous cal reading (which is counted as a cal adjustment, hence does not appear in the feed). For example, 500 cals for 12k steps... which actually include both the active, as well as „at rest” calories - sync glitch with my wearable. I am aware of the issue, but as I have a fixed cal allotment per day regardless of activity, I honestly don't care much about it... or at all, for that matter.
While I do agree that it nags me a bit to see someone log 1,200 cals for a bit of treadmill when they're probably in their 130s, it is up to them... their weight management, their energy management. Maybe they do the same as I, and don't factor in the burn at all.1 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Part of the issue is with the MFP calorie estimators for exercise, which seem to be in active conflict with their activity multipliers. For instance, lets take a 30 year old, 5'4, 160 pound woman. BMR would be 1431, which means that if someone defined themselves as Sedentary, they would have a normal burn of 1717. Now lets say that person does house cleaning for a living. They have 2 options. They could choose their activity level as either "active" or "highly active", which would give them another 500-700 calories per day of budgeting. Or they could log 480 minutes of "Cleaning, light, moderate effort", which would likely say that they burned about 3x the calories than if they included that as part of their activity level.
So I think a big issue with calorie logging is that logging basic household activities greatly overestimates the number of calories burned. Exercise is not meant to be done for hours. If a person finds themselves doing hours of a life related exercise on the regular, they should raise their activity level, rather than logging it as exercise. Exercise should be for specific acts of exercise outside of normal daily activity.
Huh? Why not? And who didn't mean for us to exercise for hours?
Yesterday I spent about 3.5 hours riding my bike up and down Sherman Pass. The day before I rode Loup Loup Pass, which coincidentally also took me about 3.5 hours. I work as a software engineer so sedentary is the correct activity level. Today it's stormy and the weekday riding is over.
This is taking one sentence of a long post out of the context that was in the rest of the post. I was referring to basic daily activity that is recorded as exercise on the site, greatly overexaggerating the number of calories burned. Of course you can do real exercise for hours. But the exercise logging tool isn't effective for that for most people. Sure if you are marathon training or a distance cycler or an elite athlete, then the burn amounts may be more accurate. But a very small percentage of people ever burn thousands of calories from exercise a day. Which is a number that MFP will tell people if they log their basic activity as exercise.
Thanks for clearing that up. I had the initial reaction when other posters pulled just that part out, but when I went back and read your entire post, I thought it meant what you just clarified it to mean.2 -
Lillymoo01 wrote: »Unless a person is asking for help I get a giggle and move on as it is really none of my business. That being said, some might scratch their heads with my diary at times because I do what works for me.
I sync Map My Walk here so my walks are automatically synced. I also have Pacer synced. I know that Pacer gives me a much more accurate calorie count but like Map My Walk logged so I have a record on here of how much I have walked in a day. When I go for a walk I just do a quick add of the calories burned in my food diary and at the end of the day edit my walks to 1 calorie and delete the quick adds. It works for me but could leave some people perplexed if they look at my diary during the day.
I do use MapMyHike, for the entertainment factor, and it is also useful to prevent me from getting lost in the woods, although I can't help but feel that it's cheating. Although when the woods are deep enough there's no GPS. It's like the tech on Star Trek that is always failing at inopportune times.
But anyway, I don't sync MapMyHike with MFP - I log from the MFP database, which interestingly gives me far less calories for the same activity, despite them both being owned by Under Armour.1 -
I wonder how many posters here have had friends chime in on their things that show up in the newsfeed. For example--if you were losing too fast did someone out of the blue mention it--or did you get the "good job"? If you closed out your diary and you were over a ton because of pizza and beer did someone say "better watch out for those party nights". And--how would you feel if they did.
For those of us who are newly successful--there is a honeymoon period where we think we have figured it all out--we feel great, look pretty darn good and want to share to secret to success. I think the boards are for that--and your newsfeeds should not be.8 -
I don't even look at my feed, let alone comment on it. I'm a terrible friend.5
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not on here - I don't really follow what my (very few) MFP friends log to be honest. However, in real life... I have a friend who has lost a load of weight in the last year, a great job. But he doesn't half talk toot about how many calories he burns. He goes on about all the time he spends on Suffer Fest (exercise bike) and the thousands of calories it burns - I suspect a serious over estimation. I got some level of proof when we were on holiday earlier in the year and he logged a two and a half hour hike on his fitness band. It was a two and a half hour stroll. I know. I was there...2
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mountainmare wrote: »I wonder how many posters here have had friends chime in on their things that show up in the newsfeed. For example--if you were losing too fast did someone out of the blue mention it--or did you get the "good job"? If you closed out your diary and you were over a ton because of pizza and beer did someone say "better watch out for those party nights". And--how would you feel if they did.
For those of us who are newly successful--there is a honeymoon period where we think we have figured it all out--we feel great, look pretty darn good and want to share to secret to success. I think the boards are for that--and your newsfeeds should not be.
You may be on to something there that I am guilty of. I lost ~65 and have been below goal 8 months. There was no immediate "honeymoon"; for months I was scared sheetless that every little bounce was me blowing it again. The last couple of months I have started getting confident and maybe a little cocky. I am a bit freer with my opinion now that I finally believe that it might actually be of some value. That's especially true when I see things that make it look like someone is making the same sort of mistakes I did during one of my many failures. I need to keep in mind that that I might be wrong about that conclusion and that I am still just one binge away from starting to slide down the hill again. Right now I am pretty convinced I won't let that happen and I hope I am right.2 -
CarvedTones--I get it and I also get pushing the big six-oh. While I didn't have a major weight problem when I was close to 60 I started running, weight lifting, tai chi along with other stuff. (I had always been active with horses and barn work--but lost my horse so substituted other activities). At 65 I was running 5Ks and feeling great--then a series of injuries...and some health issues found me obese approaching 69, now approaching the big seven--oh I have changed my tune. My cockiness and advice of ten years ago would never apply to me now...so I now know that what is true for me is true for me only. I don't do many friends because when it comes right down to it everyone is on their own journey. If I logged my daily walks it would only be to log that we got our walk in, I don't care about the calorie count, my food logging is accurate enough for me, so if you looked at my diary there could be plenty of helpful suggestions to be made, suggestions that I don't want unless I ask for them.
So please do keep putting your observations out there...I have read your posts and they are helpful, but understand that to some people the friend list is different. (and it is nice to see someone so young having such a good time getting fit)3 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Part of the issue is with the MFP calorie estimators for exercise, which seem to be in active conflict with their activity multipliers. For instance, lets take a 30 year old, 5'4, 160 pound woman. BMR would be 1431, which means that if someone defined themselves as Sedentary, they would have a normal burn of 1717. Now lets say that person does house cleaning for a living. They have 2 options. They could choose their activity level as either "active" or "highly active", which would give them another 500-700 calories per day of budgeting. Or they could log 480 minutes of "Cleaning, light, moderate effort", which would likely say that they burned about 3x the calories than if they included that as part of their activity level.
So I think a big issue with calorie logging is that logging basic household activities greatly overestimates the number of calories burned. Exercise is not meant to be done for hours. If a person finds themselves doing hours of a life related exercise on the regular, they should raise their activity level, rather than logging it as exercise. Exercise should be for specific acts of exercise outside of normal daily activity.
Huh? Why not? And who didn't mean for us to exercise for hours?
Yesterday I spent about 3.5 hours riding my bike up and down Sherman Pass. The day before I rode Loup Loup Pass, which coincidentally also took me about 3.5 hours. I work as a software engineer so sedentary is the correct activity level. Today it's stormy and the weekday riding is over.
This is taking one sentence of a long post out of the context that was in the rest of the post. I was referring to basic daily activity that is recorded as exercise on the site, greatly overexaggerating the number of calories burned. Of course you can do real exercise for hours. But the exercise logging tool isn't effective for that for most people. Sure if you are marathon training or a distance cycler or an elite athlete, then the burn amounts may be more accurate. But a very small percentage of people ever burn thousands of calories from exercise a day. Which is a number that MFP will tell people if they log their basic activity as exercise.
Ok, cool. That all makes sense. Sometimes people have strange ideas, I wasn't sure if you were talking about how to use the logging tools or if you thought it was bad to exercise for hours. Thanks for clarifying!
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Not unless people are asking for advice, usually.1
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