How to track calories burned through exercise

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KMNV9512
KMNV9512 Posts: 8 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I'm new on this application and I want to count the calories burned through running, a lot of walking and body weight exercises i do. As i have different exercise routine for everyday. Is it possible with my smartphone only??

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  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,686 Member
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    I enter my exercises manually. Thus, I'll log: walking at 3 mph for 20 minutes, then running at 6 mph for 60 minutes, then calisthenics or yoga for 15 minutes. It isn't difficult. If you have a Garmin watch you could sync it with the app, but I find that my watch overcounts more than MFP does since it includes 'steps' that were actually me petting the dog.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,545 Member
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    Yeah. Add them via the Cardio section under Exercise. Enter your minutes, you'll get a calorie estimate. There's strength training and I'm sure they must have walking, running, etc.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,735 Member
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    What they said, mostly. IME, the MFP estimates for walking tend to be one of the more likely to be higher than realistic, especially for longer, relatively moderate/slow walks. For those, I would get the calorie estimate from this source, with the "energy" box set to "net":

    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

    It has a setting for running, too.

    Inputs to that include walking/running speed (the average speed for that walk/run), and amount of time. There are free apps that you can run on your phone that will give you reasonable estimates of those. You can then log that calorie estimate into MFP - just type over MFP's calorie estimate before adding.
  • KMNV9512
    KMNV9512 Posts: 8 Member
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    @Retroguy2000 @AnnPT77 Are you sure those calories are accurate? According to MFP we burn only ~ 53 calories for 20 minutes of strength training. Ain't these are less than the real values and what should i do for the calories burned through walking because I've a active lifestyle
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,278 Member
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    Strength training doesn't burn a lot of calories. That's just the way it is.

    As for walking, I recommend the calculator that AnnPT77 linked to, it's based on scientific studies.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,512 Member
    edited October 2023
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    If you walk purposefully, as exercise then use the calculator AnnPT77 linked to. Don't forget to select net calories (it's set to gross by default).

    And yeah, strength training doesn't burn a ton of calories. It's what it is. It's still good for your health. And looks.

    If you walk a lot for your work, or because you run behind your children all day then that's part of your activity level that you find in the setup of your goals. In that case you'd not be sedentary but possibly active or very active.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,545 Member
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    KMNV9512 wrote: »
    @Retroguy2000 @AnnPT77 Are you sure those calories are accurate? According to MFP we burn only ~ 53 calories for 20 minutes of strength training. Ain't these are less than the real values and what should i do for the calories burned through walking because I've a active lifestyle
    Yeah, it's close. MFP says 60 mins for me is 295 (it'll depend on your weight). I choose to enter 250 usually, to be conservative.

    You can manually try a MET estimate. A ballpark estimate via Google is 3.5 MET for weights. The formula is a * 3.5 * weight / 200 = cals burned per minute, where a is the MET of an activity, and weight is in kg. But wait, that would be your total burn during the session, and you don't want to double count in MFP, so first subtract approx 1 MET which MFP has already accounted for. When I run that calculation and subtract the 1 MET first, I get 258 additional calories for an hour, and I'm over 200 pounds btw.

    Remember that while a set of reps is vigorous effort for 30-60 seconds, especially towards the end, you may be resting for two minutes between sets, and more time between exercises while you're getting set up.

    The long term benefits of course include your health, bone density, accident prevention, and your BMR goes up a few calories per pound of muscle gained.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,735 Member
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    Retroguy2000 wrote: »
    KMNV9512 wrote: »
    @Retroguy2000 @AnnPT77 Are you sure those calories are accurate? According to MFP we burn only ~ 53 calories for 20 minutes of strength training. Ain't these are less than the real values and what should i do for the calories burned through walking because I've a active lifestyle
    Yeah, it's close. MFP says 60 mins for me is 295 (it'll depend on your weight). I choose to enter 250 usually, to be conservative.

    You can manually try a MET estimate. A ballpark estimate via Google is 3.5 MET for weights. The formula is a * 3.5 * weight / 200 = cals burned per minute, where a is the MET of an activity, and weight is in kg. But wait, that would be your total burn during the session, and you don't want to double count in MFP, so first subtract approx 1 MET which MFP has already accounted for. When I run that calculation and subtract the 1 MET first, I get 258 additional calories for an hour, and I'm over 200 pounds btw.

    Remember that while a set of reps is vigorous effort for 30-60 seconds, especially towards the end, you may be resting for two minutes between sets, and more time between exercises while you're getting set up.

    The long term benefits of course include your health, bone density, accident prevention, and your BMR goes up a few calories per pound of muscle gained.

    Also, strength training drives heart rate up for reasons that have little or nothing to do with oxygen consumption, so some fitness trackers may wildly over-estimate the calorie burn for strength training. IMU, some of the good ones now use METS in the estimate because of this.

    (It's oxygen consumption that actually correlates pretty well with calorie burn. Heart rate is just a proxy, more correlated in some circumstances than others. Watching scary movies can drive up heart rate, but don't burn many extra calories.)

    In general, exercise is less central to weight loss than the popular understanding would suggest. It burns some calories, sure, but for a typical person usually much less than BMR and less than daily life activity.

    I exercise pretty consistently, and if I ate an extra good-quality decent-sized but not truly massive cookie daily, I'd wipe out the exercise calories. For sure, one of those Starbucks sweet coffee drinks (in a typical size) would wipe out the exercise calories. I stayed overweight to obese for a dozen years while training hard 6 days most weeks. It's easy to do that.

    On the flip side, it's possible to lose weight without exercising at all. (I didn't increase exercise materially to lose, since I was already quite active,) Exercise is a great idea, both strength and cardiovascular exercise, for many, many reasons, of course. Bonus points for adding in mobility and balance work, probably some other dimensions as well.

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