How to log HIIT?

Given a choice between 2 plausible options in the MFP exercise database, pick the lower calorie one. I'm saying that as a woman who believes in eating every single exercise calorie she earns. The issue is that it's much more common to over-estimate our exercise intensity (and calorie burn) than to under-estimate it.

HIIT in general is a problem to estimate. HIIT isn't an exercise type, it's an exercise pacing strategy. HIIT is also trendy (which isn't necessarily a criticism). A consequence of the trendiness factor, though, is that many very diverse things end up being called "HIIT" to get in on the trend.

What you really want to do is log the exercise in MFP as the type of exercise it is (not the pacing strategy). If you're doing high intensity aerobic dance type exercise, logging it as dance makes sense. Which dance or aerobics type to choose is a judgement call, but that's where I'd personally starting thinking about picking one of the middling to low options.

Our impulse is going to be to pick the highest plausible one, because we worked really hard, right? (Seriously. We did!) But research suggests that people usually err high when estimating exercise calories. Easy solution: Don't.

joannawaterfield973 wrote: »

I’m new here. How would I log a one hour boot camp session which is basically hiit strength training? Squats, lunges, planks, sit ups, weights etc

@joannawaterfield973, if logging to get a calorie estimate, I'd probably log it as "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)" in the cardiovascular part of the MFP exercise database, or "Calisthenics, home, light/moderate effort". Use the whole session time where you were active. You don't need to subtract short - like minute or less - breaks between sets, but it's probably a good idea to subtract any longer time where you might have been standing and listening to the instructor talk about something, or that kind of thing.

I know it's very hard work, but most anything with a major strength component doesn't burn as many calories as one might guess, in my experience. (FWIW, as context, I've been athletically active for 22 years, calorie counting (including exercise estimates) for 9+ years.)

You could consider "Circuit training, general", "Calisthenics (push-ups, sit-ups), vigorous effort" or "Circuit training, general" if you're more of an optimist than I am about calorie burn.

Those latter numbers seem high to me. For comparison (and honesty), my current mainstream is strength-y cardio (on water and machine rowing) and I'm reasonably fit so I can go at it quite hard (been training steadily for a couple of decades). The per-minute calories of that last group are more what I'd estimate per-minute for going really hard at that. YMMV.

Best wishes!