Gym routines don’t affect daily calorie count?

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mikek1286
mikek1286 Posts: 2 Member
in Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
Why doesn’t your strength training routine affect your daily calories like cardio does? Or maybe it does and I’m doing something wrong but I see that when I add and exercise like say bench press nothing changes in my calories. Shouldn’t I need to eat more if you have a gym routine?

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  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    The strength training part of the exercise diary is just an online notebook with no calorie functionality.

    To get a decent estimate search in the cardiovascular part of the diary for "strength training" and enter the entire duration of your weights session - significant recovery time between sets is assumed and taken into account.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,109 Member
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    It's a common mistake 🙂 well, not even a mistake really, let's call it a quirk of MFP.

    The strength training section is just for logging the sets and reps. For calories, you should log under Cardiovascular, choosing 'strength training (weight lifting, weight training)'.
  • Scotty2HotPie
    Scotty2HotPie Posts: 143 Member
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    Log your Gym Session under "Cardio" when you're done. There's an option for "Strength Training" under cardio. You'll have to estimate calories. I typically use 200 Calories per 60 mins.

    You don't burn a ton of calories at the gym. However, I believe weight training is superior to cardio because for every pound of muscle you gain, you're going to be passively burning more calories on a daily basis... all the time.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,505 Member
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    I usually estimate 200 calories for 45-60 mins of legs or upper body (chest/back), and 150 for a shorter arms/shoulders workout. If that's a little conservative, that's OK.

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