Burn 1000 calories or MORE in 60 minutes?

quiksylver296 wrote: »

I would suspect they are not, but the only way to know for sure is to accurately track your calories in, your weight and your exercise calories and see if your weight loss/gain proves it.

That just confirms you are getting the right calorie balance - it doesn't confirm all the estimates involved are correct (BMR, activity multiplier, food logging, exercise logging).
It achieves the purpose people calorie count for though which is far more important.

When I adjusted my daily goal to achieve the desired rate of loss my food logging was still a bit sloppy, my exercise was still exaggerated but I lost at dead on my chosen rate of 1lb/week.

darkmatter661 wrote: »

Thanks! I'm sure these are gross cals and not net. How are spinning and indoor cycling different? Is spinning simply considered much more of an interval-intensive exercise? What would you consider steady-state vs interval in terms of percentage of heart-rate variance?

The difference is in the standing element which is more typical in Spinning. Standing cycling is a weight bearing exercise, seated is not. "Jumps" and other Spinning moves don't really have an equivalence for regular cycling.

The convoluted formula for converting watts to calories includes an estimate for your actual efficiency in turning energy into power, that is in a pretty narrow range for seated cycling but very different for standing.

You can also do intervals on a bike but I've never done a Spinning class that was steady state - wouldn't really need an instructor for that!

Remember that although interval training typically feels harder it isn't necessarily a bigger calorie burner than steady state as recovery intervals drastically reduce your average (often intervals in average power terms and therefore calories are only around equal to a moderate intensity SS ride). The biggest calorie burner is as hard as you can sustain for the entire duration of your time available, it's why you don't get people doing intervals to win distance sports.

Can't put a percentage on something so variable - some of my intervals are flat out sprints for 30 seconds some are ten minutes...

sijomial wrote: »

The difference is in the standing element which is more typical in Spinning. Standing cycling is a weight bearing exercise, seated is not. "Jumps" and other Spinning moves don't really have an equivalence for regular cycling.

...snip for brevity...

My observations lead me to believe I've experienced this. My indicated watt output on the bike will DROP when I go from seated to standing.

I can put more of the energy into the bike when I am just pushing and pulling the pedals. When I'm doing jumps or running, while I may be using energy, it's not necessarily going into the bike.

I tend to sit more in spin classes, but will stand, sit, run, etc in HIIT training classes on the bike. I take the approach that it's my ride, not to mention that an hour of running on the bike in a standing position will likely leave me sore and unable to workout the next day. A 30 minute HIIT class offers enough variation and not too much.

In some ways, it can mirror a ride. A slow grind with heavy resistance imitating a steep climb (60 cadence), followed immediately by a fast sprint down the other side at 120+ cadence.

How the HIIT class doesn't follow is that I don't take a 10 minute break during every 30 minutes on the bike. Les Mills Sprint follows that rough format. You might do 40 seconds of work, all out, followed by a 20 second recovery, lather, rinse, repeat.

Unless you are doing hill repeats on your bike, probably not so much while on the bike.

The only way to really be accurate is to track via wattage.

Theoretically though 1000 calories per hour isn't a terribly ridiculous number. I'm a runner and the equivalent for me would be to run an hour at a 6 minute mile pace. Definitely above the level of your average amateur but well within range of a more serious athlete.

ETA - re: calorie counts, work is work. There may be a small efficiency gain from experience but it's not enough to make a difference and most efficiency gain will be picked up early in the learning process (meaning that even relative newcomers will get most of the efficiency benefit after a little bit of trial and error).

At the end of the day it will always take X units of power to turn a crank Y times given Z resistance. This holds especially true on a stationary bike because bodyweight does not impact the amount of work to be performed. Work is defined by the equipment and not by the individual.

What follows is just my understanding, with a hope that others more knowledgeable will correct my errors.

darkmatter661 wrote: »

In the end, whether you're doing HIIT on the bike or steady-state, is there that much of a variant when it comes calories being burned and how they translate to net calories burned? Surely, you're still working either way and they may have a moderate difference, but in the end, you're still burning calories at a particular rate either way, no matter what the Watts are at any given time.

There's potentially a significant difference in calories being burned in intervals (any type, HIIT or otherwise) vs. steady state.

What matters, for calorie burn, is the work being done, in pretty much the physics sense of "work". Intervals alternate harder work with easier work. You burn more calories per minute in the harder work vs. the easier work. So, the total calories depend on the nature of the intervals (intensity, timing).

Most people can sustain a higher intensity during steady state than the average intensity they can sustain during intervals, because the high intensity segments are more fatiguing (they challenge the physical system more). The longer duration the total workout, the more significant this becomes.

Watts, essentially, measure work, and equate to calories, with some adjustment for the efficiency of a given exercise, as I understand it. So higher watts over a time period = more work = more calories, simplistically.

As far as reading the data off of bikes, that's all over the place. At least for the Keiser bikes, I've seen them VERY differently calibrated. And I use the word very loosely because who knows how they are calibrating and whether they're even doing it right.

That Spinning bike is pretty neat, but the same rules about calibrating apply right? Wouldn't a HRM value be more indicative of how hard your body (not your bike) is working? Watts don't factor in calorie count in formulas. Watts seem more of a performance or efficiency metric.

HR is individual. Work is what matters for calorie burn. It doesn't much matter how hard you feel like you're working, or how taxed your heart may be.

Someone completely new to exercise and very unfit will possibly find it almost impossibly difficult to walk a quarter mile at 2.5mph. Their heart rate will be high. A marathon runner (even one of the same body weight) will find the same walk trivially easy. Their heart rate will be very low. If body weight is the same, and the course identical, it's the same amount of work, so roughly the same number of calories.

A HRM may say something very different, and be wrong. The HRM measures HR, and estimates calories. (The two people will certainly feel very different.)

For intervals, accuracy of calorie estimates (based on HR) is even more challenging. The unfit person's HR will stay very high even during the easy intervals, lagging the change in effort in a major way, making the HRM believe they're still working harder, longer. The fit person's HR will lag intensity changes a bit (so still misleading), but adjust much more quickly to the workload change. Depending on the assumptions built into the HRM's calorie estimation algorithms, their calorie estimate may be a little more accurate . . . or not.

Of course calibration can be relevant. Inaccurate measurements are inaccurate.

And wouldn't a very fit athlete potentially burn less calories per watt than an average person for the very reason that they are more efficient at that task?

Typically, no, not materially so, all other factors being equal. The unfit person may waste more motion (say, waggle their arms and head while walking their 2.5mph quarter mile), and burn more calories. The fit person may have no wasted motion, and burn fewer. But that's a small difference, compared to the work of the walk.

If we're talking about well-power-metered exercise (as from a good, well calibrated stationary bike), the wasted energy doesn't go into pedaling, and the unfit (unskilled) person gets no credit for those "waste" calories.

I'm not a cyclist, I'm a rower (water/machine). Rowing is fairly technical. Skills and efficiency are a big factor. I regularly see people at the gym, machine rowing, who are burning more calories than I would doing the same distance at the same pace, but - from the standpoint of what the machine measures (watts at the flywheel) - they're not getting credit from the machine , because much effort is being wasted.

darkmatter661 wrote: »

In the end, whether you're doing HIIT on the bike or steady-state, is there that much of a variant when it comes calories being burned and how they translate to net calories burned? Surely, you're still working either way and they may have a moderate difference, but in the end, you're still burning calories at a particular rate either way, no matter what the Watts are at any given time.

As far as reading the data off of bikes, that's all over the place. At least for the Keiser bikes, I've seen them VERY differently calibrated. And I use the word very loosely because who knows how they are calibrating and whether they're even doing it right.

That Spinning bike is pretty neat, but the same rules about calibrating apply right? Wouldn't a HRM value be more indicative of how hard your body (not your bike) is working? Watts don't factor in calorie count in formulas. Watts seem more of a performance or efficiency metric.

And wouldn't a very fit athlete potentially burn less calories per watt than an average person for the very reason that they are more efficient at that task?

Yes there can be a huge difference between HIIT (which isn't Spinning at all, the duration is far too long and the intensity is far too low) and steady state and that difference could be either way. HIIT feels hard but isn't a big calorie burner no matter what marketing departments try to sell you.

Still working means what? 200 cals an hour is working, 800 cals an hour is working.

Watts is the measure of how much power you are producing, not how hard it is for you to produce that power. Neither watts or calories care how hard an exercise feels.

HRM is indicative (to a degree) of how hard you are working but that absolutely not the same as calories. It's also not comparative between different people. My brother's max HR and exercise HR has normally been about 30bpm higher than mine but I'm much fitter.

An elite cyclist will probably have a marginally better efficiency ratio than a recreational cyclist - maybe 4% in calorie terms?
Lance Armstrong's efficiency improved at the rate of about 1% a year as a result of 3 to 6hrs training a day so it's not a significant factor for someone doing Spinning classes.

darkmatter661 wrote: »

Thank you everyone for your valuable input. So the bottom line is that calories as in counted via an app and HRM is fairly inaccurate information at best as it relates to real calories based purely on work. My MFP app is linked to my iCardio app and it imports the calories recorded based on my HRM data and their calculations.

I've been doing indoor cycling for 6 or 7 years now and it's a toss-up as far as a split between more HIIT style and steady state style classes. I'd like to get a more accurate number of actual calories burned so my daily records can be useful towards my goals. The bikes are no help either. They have Keisers at the gyms I attend and calibration is radically different between locations. I'll start "working" at 150W on one bike and 200W at another.

I'm more a fan of steady state workouts where I can hold a high HR for relatively long periods. Perhaps taking a sample of this type of activity on various bikes and producing a mean watt output for a specific period would allow for a 'rate' I can use based on the bike's numbers and not my HRM numbers?

The only thing you can really do is to find equipment that you know has been properly calibrated and use that to set a baseline. If you're like most of us, you probably end up repeating similar workout types from week to week (short intense, long slow, etc.) and once you get an idea of the calorie burn for each type of workout you do, extrapolating for different times/distances, etc. should get you pretty close.

Unfortunately, an average of inaccurate data won't get you closer to the truth.

darkmatter661 wrote: »

Thank you everyone for your valuable input. So the bottom line is that calories as in counted via an app and HRM is fairly inaccurate information at best as it relates to real calories based purely on work. My MFP app is linked to my iCardio app and it imports the calories recorded based on my HRM data and their calculations.

I've been doing indoor cycling for 6 or 7 years now and it's a toss-up as far as a split between more HIIT style and steady state style classes. I'd like to get a more accurate number of actual calories burned so my daily records can be useful towards my goals. The bikes are no help either. They have Keisers at the gyms I attend and calibration is radically different between locations. I'll start "working" at 150W on one bike and 200W at another.

I'm more a fan of steady state workouts where I can hold a high HR for relatively long periods. Perhaps taking a sample of this type of activity on various bikes and producing a mean watt output for a specific period would allow for a 'rate' I can use based on the bike's numbers and not my HRM numbers?

Do you have an outdoor bike? Can you borrow or rent one if not?

Some shops rent power meters. Last time I looked into it was a few years ago and the rate I found was $75/week. Being in Seattle, I have options locally, but you can do this over the internet with shipping too.

If you want a power meter for a week and do several rides with it, you'll gain a much better idea about your energy expenditure on a bike in different contexts. The $ isn't trivial, but it's fair for the knowledge you can gain.