How true are MFP's Exercise Calories Burned?

I typically get an overestimation from mfp. If I ride my stationary bike in vigorous mode, the moderate effort on mfp is very close to what my HRM tells me.

The elliptical... if I enter mfp's value, it's over by about 10%-ish.

walking... I select the carrying load of 15 pounds and it tells me 295 for my walk this AM, but my HRM said I burned just over 500. If I just select the "very brisk pace" (4.0 mph), it says 421-getting closer, but still not there. I think the stroller added that extra burn for me.

It just depends. It really does pay to get a HRM.

I have used MFp for all my exercises. I eat back most of my calories. I have been on MFP for 145days a of today and have lost 25lbs during that time. I am still losing. Works for me!

Part of why MFP estimates are often too high is that your daily goal is based on a built-in 24 hours of regular activity. So if you log an hour of running on top of that, it's like saying you had a 25-hour day. To be accurate, when logging an hour of exercise, you would have to subtract an hour of normal activity. Since you can't really do that, I just decrease the amount of minutes of exercise I log (versus what I actually did) to make up for it.

For example, if my daily expenditure is 2400 then my typical hourly expenditure is about 100. If I exercise for an hour and MFP says it burned 400 calories, that's really only 300 calories more than I would have burned anyway. So I would only log 45 minutes of that exercise (instead of 60) since 300/400 = 3/4.

I've had great success doing it this way, losing weight at very nearly the same rate as expected from my MFP goal settings.

Overestimating exercise calories in the first place could well be part of why many MFPers are hesitant to eat them all back.

Another issue is that some activities, like cleaning, bowling, or golfing, for example, can involve a lot of pausing in between actual activity (waiting while others play, etc). You shouldn't get credit for a full 2.5 hours of golfing if a lot of that time was spent just standing or sitting around. Instead, I try to estimate how long it would have taken had there been no interruptions.

http://www.fitsugar.com/Whats-Diff-Total-Calorie-Burn-Net-Calorie-Burn-1523858

That's yet another good reason for just doing a TDEE Deficit based method. With exercise already included in the TDEE method, it doesn't really matter.

But you did give me a good idea for improvement to a spreadsheet, where you could use your own HRM calorie burn estimates to get better TDEE estimate.

But of course if doing that to get better estimate, better remove what was planned on happening anyway.

Thanks for the reminder.

Also goes to show, unless doing a recovery type workout, if you are going to give 30-60 minutes for a workout, you might as well push it and get some serious calories, so that effect is less.
Someone barely walking 2 mph just isn't getting much above expected normal anyway.

It depends on how precise the activity is.

For running or walking, where you're going a set or average pace for a set amount of time... it's probably pretty close.

For something more vague, like the elliptical, where there's no variation for resistance or pace, it has as much chance of being right as a broken clock.

I only trust my HRM.

I use my own way to check for calories burned, fat burned, heart rate. Either the machine I am working on in my home gym is set according to my height, weight, gender, or a HRM.

I rarely ever trust MFP, unless I'm in a hurry and did a quick jog, something like that.

It sounds like I need to invest in a HRM!

No idea how accurate it is but will say one thing, durin my weight loss process ive only eva used MFP's calorie estimates for both foods eaten and what burned through exercise and im dwn 57lb. so they must be doing something right yh? :-)

That is awesome :-)
I was using the elliptical's machine "calories burned" for quite some time, but it doesn't take my weight into factor. It just counts the time, the level of difficulty, and calories burned. So for 5 minutes -hard by the way I was only burning a tiny amount but according to MFP's numbers the burn was higher.. I've decided to start using MFP's numbers. On the days where I do use the elliptical I tend to get a little bit hungrier and always eat something else. If I used the ellipticals' numbers I'd be over calorie for that day, MFP's I'd be just fine.

If you don't have a HRM, using MFP's exercise database is better than nothing. It worked just fine for me and I lost 40lbs in about 5 months using it. I did buy a HRM and I like using it and getting more accurate data because on different days, even weather affects my cals burned. For instance if it's hot out, I will burn up to 200 more cals on one bike ride and the more it cools off the lower that number gets. Also, as I've lost weight, I burn fewer cals. per exercise session. The HRM keeps me from eating too many cals back.

If you do get one, I love the Polar FT4. It's worth every penny.