How to log it?

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ShrinkingDucky
ShrinkingDucky Posts: 12 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I hike fairly often, and am happy logging this. However, how do I log, or even calculate on any other site, the extra calories I burn by carrying 13-15lbs of kit?

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  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,109 Member
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    I like this calculator:
    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs
    Select 'net calories', not gross, for the calories to enter in MFP.

    I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I once read that you should enter your weight including backpack etc to calculate the calories burned while carrying a load.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,943 Member
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    Yeah, I used to go to great lengths to try to estimate the exact calories burned.

    My pack doesn't weigh more than 20 pounds usually and that amounts to just a handful of calories (like 10-20) so I stopped worrying about that a loooooong time ago. I suppose if you're carrying 60 pounds for ten hours? I dunno - even that is just bonus calories, IMO.
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 873 Member
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    If I were you I'd try to pick up an affordable HRM with a chest strap and use that to add a source of info for estimated avg. calories burned during that workout.

    I used one while hiking/running in the beginning of my weight loss (I have misplaced the chest strap.....lol). They are not necessarily exactly accurate as far as calorie burn but I would use an app (like RunKeeper or Strava...) to log my runs/hikes/walks too and it also gives a calorie burn estimate and then I'd choose and log a calorie burn number somewhere in between those two and I lost weight at the expected rate so it was obviously close enough.

    I don't know how else to take into account the load you are carrying...but MFP does have a 'hiking' option that says, "climbing hills, carrying >10lb" and "climbing hills, carrying 10-20lb"
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,876 Member
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    Given the nature of determining calorie expenditure for a given activity being very inexact and very much an estimate, I'd not bother and just chalk it up to gravy. It's not really going to be significant anyway.
  • BrianSharpe
    BrianSharpe Posts: 9,249 Member
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    When you're walking carrying an additional 20lbs would increase your expenditure by approx 6 cal for every mile walked (assuming reasonably level terrain - if it was very hilly the expenditure would increase). As a couple of others have mentioned consider them bonus calories.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Ditto to other advice for short daily hikes - just use that exrx site with real weight (it's assuming a basic metabolic burn rate based on the weight entered - backpack isn't metabolically active for burning calories, so that's a small inflated amount if you were to add weight of backpack).

    Now - if you were doing thru-hike weeks on end and hiking all day long and already at reasonable weight - now a decent estimate of calories matters so you don't lose lean mass or stress body out.

    I'll see if I can find this site useful for that where it looked at incline, decline, and estimated watts needed for weight entered to do a route given. Watts to calories and there ya go.

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