Massage Therapy calories burned....help!

I am an LMT as well, and I always wonder this too! It's a pretty strenuous job, but I've never logged any cals burned for it because I figure it can just be extra help to my calories I burn in workouts. I don't want to overestimate the burn and eat it back.

I use the following METs compendium to do calorie burns.

http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/tools/docs/documents_compendium.pdf

Multiply the MET level (4.0 for massage) by your weight in kilograms and you get a calorie burn per hour.

awesome!! can i now count these calories on this site??! bc that would give me so many more calories that i can eat lol!! you know me- anakinlover :0)

Google: "calories burned doing massage" Several different links...

Can I get a massage?

I too am an LMT, and from what I've read I've figured 200 calories per hour as a loose figure between my deep tissue and relaxation sessions. But it's SO FREAKIN' HARD to figure out if we are eating too few vs. too many calories! THIS part of it has been very frustrating. So this week I've started adding massage to cardio and see what happens. I have a feeling that 1200 calories per day for my height and weight just isn't enough???

Thanks so much for this post. I am currently in school to become a LMT and I was wondering how I should calculate that in..or if I should at all...very helpful info

don't forget though that 120-180 of those calories are your BMR, and woulda been burned had you just stood around doing nothing. So that 300 burned from your heart rate monitor means the burn from doing massage is only 80-20.

for reference, sitting doing nothing is about 120ish calories and standing is about 180 calories an hour.

When you first start doing massage you burn alot more as your body is unaccustomed to the movement and stress on it, but after that I do not think you burn hardly any.
Especially for something basic like S.A. If you are doing deep tissue with lots of stretching on your client you could probably say you burned more, but honestly even if you are doing 8 a day, I would just consider it a job and part of life... I would not consider logging the calories burned. but that's just me. =/

This is what I just found!!

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/calories_burned.asp?exercise=117

Hope it helps!! I was in the same boat!

Katie

No wonder I am always so hungry when I massage!! Thanks for posting the helpful info

I have been an LMT for 2 years, and I typically do @ 6 50 minute sessions per day, 5 days per week. (Guess where I work?) By the most conservative estimates here, that should mean I burn @ 1,000 calories per day, and based on my myfitnesspal numbers, I should be able to eat @ 3,000 calories per day and lose weight. I'm here to tell ya, it ain't true. This has been the source of some frustration for me, as it was among my motives for choosing massage as a profession that I thought it would help me lose weight. I suppose the fact that many of my teachers struggled with their weight might have been a clue. In my experience, most therapists actually gain weight when they start, and the only exceptions I can think of pursue some course of rigorous exercise outside of work. I am really at a loss as to why this would be true, as I have recently been going to the KoKo Fit Club, which calculates calories burned during my 40 minute strength training session, and it's typically @ 300 calories, and doesn't seem significantly more strenuous than giving a massage, particularly if it's deep tissue. But, although it's baffling and frustrating, I've stopped counting any calotie burn whatsoever for my work.