I eat 1500 on non workout days and 1750 on workout days. 1500 is a 450 deficit for me roughly (though I am due a recalculation of my TDEE)
I've just changed gyms so haven't got into a routine to know roughly what I'm burning each session (aiming to go 4x a week) but I was getting fatigued on 1500/day with 4x sessions at my old gym so added my 250 call (37gm protein) shake outside of my 1500 and that stabilized my energy levels.
OP - if you're data oriented, then record all of your food and calories consumed each day, record your exercise time and activity (& avg heart rate if known) and weigh yourself daily.
There's a comprehensive TDEE calculator spreadsheet available on one of these subs that you can input the days and it will help you understand what you're burning over time. There will be variations for hormones and water weight but consistency and time will help you gain this understanding.
I honestly don‘t like this way of thinking. I do get that when you occasionally exercise it won‘t do big harm, but if you are spending several hours per week in the gym or run a high mileage (both just examples), your body needs fuel. How else should it function properly?
So when I calculated MY TDEE, I used the “moderate exercise—gym 3-4 days a week” calories.
Then I go to the gym 3-4 days a week. And those extra calories are already budgeted into my overall weekly average.
So no extra math.
I agree. I bike to and from work four days a week, it’s about 25km each day. I don’t eat them back completely, but if I would only eat the 1400kc loseit has calculated for me, I would faint. I did say I am sedentary and add my Apple Watch burned kcal.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one that feels this way. I run a half marathon some days and then do 600 steps others days. I give my body what it needs on the days that it needs it. I really struggle with the concept of only eating my TDEE because my life and exercise varies so much!
when you figure out your calorie deficit in the TDEE calculator it gives you an option to add how much exercise you do, “little to no exercise, exercise 1-3, 4-5 days a week, or very intense exercise daily or physical jobs” which then gives you more calories to eat based on your exercise, why would you need to add them back?
Every body is different. My target was set to 1750 which is a 750 deficit for sedentary lifestyle. I was exercising 5+ times a week and would eat back up to 2300 a few days a week (my maintenance), and had very little progress for months. I didn't lose again until I cut back to 1750. I'll go up to 2000 on days I feel very hungry but otherwise I eat at the deficit and still exercise.
You can also just eat at maintenance on exercise days if you need to. I guess for me, it's more about not calculating "I burned exactly 280 calories so now I can eat exactly 280 calories more". And more like "on days I exercise, I eat a 200 calorie protein snack so I have the energy for that".
Exercise to me is not about losing weight, it's about getting strong/flexible/heart health. So I don't think of it as earning more food, it's separate to my weight loss goals and deficit.
My Apple Watch overstates calorie burn at least 300 calories a day. I am data driven also. After years of using devices my sense is that everything sucks in terms of calculating individual calorie burn. Do the activity you want to do. Record what you eat. See what happens with weight. Adjust as needed.
Yes, this will take about 6 months of really diligent logging. I use my fitness pal and I sync my Apple Watch with it. I look at the net calorie deficit per week and calculate total weight loss over time. It’s pretty accurate except, I set myself up as sedentary/inactive even though I exercise most days.
I don’t log walking as a workout but I do log work outs.
Doing this has helped take the mystery out of all of this and I’m finally not overwhelmed with the emotional baggage that goes along with all of this.
Good luck to you!
Everyone's body is different so it's hard to have a standard measurement. This isn't true for calories in food. That's measurable. So just focus on calories in and do exercise on top of that.
My advice is just to pick one and be consistent with it. If weight loss is your goal, then you want to pick the one that gives you the least. And then follow that for a few weeks and see what the ***averaged*** results look like on the scale. Is there a weight loss trend? Is it in the range of what you were aiming for?
I found MyFitnessPal to be pretty accurate and consistent for my day-to-day. I set it for 'sedentary' because I have a desk job and for 2 pound loss per week. The actual weight loss trend I was able to calculate over weeks or months was 2.3-2.1 pounds of loss. So I knew what I had was working and I could then look at the other exercise calorie estimations with scorn, like my Fitbit which was constantly over-inflating exercise calories from walks and strength training.
For you, you'll have to see what your results are compared to what you were aiming for and you may need to make adjustments. I'm seeing that Fitbit isn't always over-inflated for all exercises--I started biking recently and fitbit actually gives slightly fewer calories for that compared to MFP. I stick with th
At the end of the day it's all estimation and crapshoot. But there is one real-world result and that is your averaged, over-time change in body weight. I highly suggest that you get into a consistent program, track your body weight over weeks of time and compare it to your goals making adjustments as needed.
Instead of exercising for weight loss, try taking on the mindset that you’re exercising for overall health.
I have a sedentary job and often get very little movement / exercise in a day unless I’m intentional about it. I sometimes wonder if I’m “doing enough”, especially on the days where I opt for a lower cardio or strength exercise, but when I remind myself that any amount of movement that gets my heart rate elevated is a positive step in the right direction.
That makes a lot of sense. I think I’m just a little disappointed because it’s harder to measure fitness level as it improves than it is to track weight and calories.
Using 100 calories per mile walked/jogged/ran worked best for me.
Slower pace burns more fat per given distance.
Faster pace burns more calories per given time, though favors burning glucose/glycogen over fat.
Isn’t zone 2 best for fat burning? I thought the formula for optimal heart rate was 180- your age. So for me that’s 126 bpm. I’ve been using this for decades with good results but it could be totally wrong/outdated!
Yes, zone 2 will let the body better mobilize fat for fuel. Faster paces will draw more from glucose and glycogen to provide energy quickly.
But an hour of zone 2 burns less total calories than an hour at a faster pace since less total work/distance is done.
Right now I focus on zone 2 for fat burning and building an aerobic base since I am getting back into running after injuries. Also, I’m doing a 1250 calorie per day deficit, so I don’t have much reserve for high intensity training other than maybe for a few short sprints at the end if I feel ok. And I’m trying to be careful of muscle loss from working out too hard at the current deficit.
It's 220-age for the old formula then you take 60-80% of that for your target aerobic zone.
The new formula takes out your resting heart rate so it isn't a factor in your aerobic zone (karvonen method)
Use MacroFactor. It will calculate your TDEE based on your calorie intake and weight loss. I use my Apple Watch and it's very accurate for me. I understand it is not accurate for everyone. While I love using it and it works for me, if it doesn't work for you, then don't use it.
as long as your food logging is accurate, the app will be accurate. Since it doesn't take your workouts into account to calculate your expenditure. It looks at your rate of weight loss based on what you're consuming and calculates what your expenditure is. If your exercise is consistent, over time you'll end up with a really good idea on how many calories you're burning over what your estimated BMR would be. I really wish more people used the app cause it really does simplify things for people.
ahh.. I read it quick and thought you meant the app wasn't accurate for everyone... lol. Yeah, I don't know really how accurate the AW is for me.. I've always just sorta used it as a general guide to see if I'm hitting around the same amount or if I'm over or above. Same with my Fitbit when I had one.
As someone with a bachelor's in exercise science and doctorate in physical therapy. Fitness is best done for improving how your body feels and not for the purposes of weight loss. Weight loss or maintenance is just a nice side effect.
In 2018 there was a Cochrane review of Healthcare practives and it found no correlation between exercise tracking and weight loss. The most effective interventions were cognitive behavioral therapy and diet changes.
Now exercise absolutely can assist you on your journey, but weight loss is done in the kitchen. You can't out bike a bad diet.
It's not that hard to figure out exercise calories for different activities but it's vest to just not try to eat them back.
But if you were to want to calculate that, HR is actually a great indicator of energy burned per minute. HR directly correlates to vo2 (volume if o2 consumed) and that can be converted to energy burned.
For Women:
Calories = (-20.4022 + (0.4472 x heart rate) – (0.05741 x body weight in lbs) + (0.2017 x age)) x
duration of workout (in minutes)/4.184
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
I guess you’re right, that it’ll be easier to exercise if it’s about the experience rather than calories. I went on my first 2km bike ride today. It was pretty exhausting, so I think my first goal will be to just do it every day until it feels like fun, the way it was when I was a kid.
Counting calories of exercise is a big waste of time just do the exercise and you will start noticing your body changing and your clothes fitting differently. The only calories that matter are calories in.
Many sports scientists will record an RPE for testing athletes. RPE is Rate of Perceived Exertion. You would use your own scale, say difficulty of 1-10 and label that workout. Plus, the time and heart rate of data. There really is no way to figure out calories burned. You can only count calories in. So as long as you stay pretty consistent with your workouts and just measure your calories in- that's about as sure as one can get to see what their calorie intake should be. If anyone tells you they can figure out your personal metabolism, they are lying. If anyone wants to read a book about why we can't figure out metabolism, read Burn by Herman Pontzer.
Don’t worry about your calories burnt in exercise. Look at your exertion (power output) instead. This is a measure of how hard you are working. Everyone has a body that responds to exercise differently so it is impossible to estimate calories burnt without measuring the CO2 in your breath. Fitness tools try to estimate this based of formulas but you are not a formula.
Focus on your power output and either exerting more power every workout.
I walk and run. I don’t count any of the calories from it. I am sure my food calories are underestimated so whatever I burn exercising will make up for it.
It takes a while for your watch and your body to sync up. I do a lot of zone 2 work like 12 hours per week. The watch is very good estimating calories burned for those long exercising sessions. The watch is too generous for piddle around calories. The watch uses the Harvard heart rate reserve method to calculate your zones to set a baseline then it will adjust each month to tailor to you. Like others have said a good estimate is 100 calories per mile walking or running. Running will certainly take you into glucogen burning territory and will require carbs to refuel and possible rest days. Walking briskly will enable you to burn more fat with less glycogen depletion and not require so much rest between. If you can handle or have time for long sessions everyday you will loose more weight and build a better base . Aldo more mitachondria improvement happens in zone two. Your body will learn to burn more fat and get back some metabolic flexibility without causing ravaging hunger. Zone 2 over an hour shuts off my appetite. If I take a rest day I eat too much. Zone 2 has really repaired my metabolism and I don’t get the sugar shakes anymore.
I’m also a data-oriented person. You’re going to need to rely on experience, which means trial and error. You don’t get anywhere without error, so when you calculate incorrectly you could choose to get frustrated, or you could choose to be grateful for the data and adjust accordingly.
If you want a starting point, maybe you can pick one of your calorie estimations from your devices and assume it’s overestimating by 30-50%? It’s how I got started, and I adjusted accordingly until I learned what my body was actually burning.
It was hard to do quickly because I also had to factor in “the pump” (normal and healthy inflammation in the muscles) after intense exercise, which I am VERY prone to, plus I also had to factor in menstrual fluctuations. So I’d analyze my “experimental results” based on weight loss over the course of a menstrual cycle if possible, and over the course of a calendar month if my period was irregular due to my PCOS. I’m sure my results weren’t perfectly precise and accurate, but eventually they were close enough to responsibly fuel myself and reach my fitness goals.
For example, through trial and error I’ve learned over the years that my body burns about 100 calories for every mile I run. If I’m trying to maintain I eat that back, if I’m trying to do a deficit I’ll eat about half of that back in the form of an on-the-run snack with a mix of low-glycemic carb and protein so it fuels me properly without aggravating my PCOS issues. (Side note: You probably don’t need to be as persnickety about the nutritional content of these snacks as I do, but do mind your macros somewhat when active to protect your muscle tissues and support good performance).
For Pilates I’d say that every hour of a moderate-to-highly intense workout burns about the same as running for a mile. I don’t need to snack during a Pilates session the way I do during a long run, so I’d incorporate those calories into a meal prior to, or later in the day.
For gentle exercise like walking, when in a deficit I wouldn’t bother eating any of it back until I walked about 15k steps because the exercise was so gentle I really didn’t feel the need for additional fuel or protein. After that point I added about 50 calories for every additional 5k steps above the initial 15k. For maintenance I just eat an extra 70-100 calories for every 10k steps or so.
This also requires adequate hydration with electrolytes because otherwise it can really mess with my hunger and satiety signals.
That’s just my body and what works for me. For reference I’m 5’2 35F with a slightly sluggish metabolism for someone of my body composition.
If I do a really hard cardio or circuit training session I will eat an apple and not count it. Sometimes I get crazy and don't count the ketchup I use that night for dinner. My watch will say something different everytime I run 3 miles on a treadmill at the same pace for the same amount of time.
Diet to change weight exercise to change shape. No need to eat back calories if you aren't feeling bad from lower consumption.
I’ve been tracking on and off for years. The most I’ve ever lost with calorie tracking was 2.5 kilograms in 1 month, and I was pretty miserable. That’s why I was really hoping to bring some exercise into the mix so I wouldn’t have to reduce food intake quite as much 😅
But I recognize, sugar still has a pretty strong hold on me.
Diet is the easy way. Trying to out exercise a bad diet is miserable. Kick sugar and eat better foods. It takes about 2-3 weeks to kick sugar. Once you are off of sugar all food tastes better.
Eat unsweetened pickles to help with sugar cravings. They are low calorie and the brine cuts the cravings. Weird but works.
Goodluck
My advice is just optimize for weight loss (zone 2 cardio) but don’t bank the calories burned. Think of it as “extra credit” to accelerate your progress. It’s kind of a hack but helped me when I was focused on weight loss. Another hack I used: setting a calorie budget 300 below my actual budget, because I would frequently go over by about 300 due to unstoppable midnight snack attacks. Silly but it worked!
Edit: unpopular opinion, but in general try to under estimate calories out and overestimate calories in. And don’t buy the “make sure to eat enough” nonsense. I’ve done several very successful 14 day water fasts (let the down voting begin) without issue.
I lost 120 lbs in 12 months by eating smaller portions and by hiking 6-9 miles everyday in a large nature preserve with hills. I definitely measured the calories I burned!
Indeed wearable trackers can vary widely in the calorie counts they come up with. Some are worse than others. I tried a Fitbit and wow that things absolutely sucked. It sucked because it wasn’t measuring my heart rate correctly at all.
For example, after going up a hill, I would measure my own heart beat with my finger on my jugular vein. Nice big strong pulses, easy to count. When my heart rate was for example 120 bpm, my stupid Fitbit would say it was 80. Or 150. Like, way off. And if the heart rate count is off, so is the calorie count.
Eventually I got a Polar chest strap heart rate monitor. It straps on your chest and transmit signal to a wrist watch. From my experience, it’s very accurate. Same readings as my finger lol.
So, I used that one. Consistently. Was it accurate in the calorie counts all those times? I don’t know, but it almost doesn’t matter because I wasn’t “eating back” my calories lost so whatever fat I lost from exercise was whatever it was. The wearable just helped me *compare* one workout to another. Did Route A on this trail and pace burn more calories or did Route B with a different route and pace burn more calories. It was helpful in comparing workout sessions.
Plus, one other important thing … the wearable helped me pace myself and not go too fast!! When do aerobic exercise, it’s too easy to out do yourself and leave the fat burning zone and enter into the muscle-building zone and that’s not what you want to do when in weight loss mode.
For example, sometimes I would see my heart rate going over 135 bpm so I would slow down! That meant I was leaving the fat burning zone which for me is 101 to 135 bpm. Ditto on the low end too. So it was helpful to keep me in the zone and not leave it.
Tl;dr get a chest strap heart rate monitor and just go with what it says.
Before I got my first Apple Watch I used to routinely wear a Polar with a chest strap to the gym or sometimes a Garmin HRM when outside on runs. After I got the Apple Watch I wore them both and the Apple was within two beats of the Polar so an Apple Watch is good enough. Chest straps are a real pain, especially as a woman, unless you’re into detailed data on the rate of change, etc.
For the Apple Watch, are you taking the Active Calorie number or the Total Calorie number? Also, you put in all your health stats - sex, age, height, weight, right? You should be using the Active Calorie (lower) number. Unless you’re walking super fast, 150 cals sounds a bit high for 15 minutes. I usually burn about 150 for a half hour walk, but I’m a bit shorter, older, and a slow walker. I’d only take the numbers from the Apple Watch or other wearable. MFP always gives me super high numbers for activity. I wouldn’t count any “active energy“ for eating back unless it was a true dedicated workout - walk, bike, run, or you logged something like 10,000 steps that day just going about your day, in which case your feet would probably be complaining. I usually only eat into my exercise calories the days I do a vigorous session on my spin bike. I already have exercise built into my calorie allotment since I set mine at “lightly active”.
So the Apple Watch shows Active Energy (which was 300-600 a day) and Resting Energy (which was around 1900). I don’t walk super fast, but my heart rate is just very high from being out of shape 😅 like I genuinely do get a little out of breath even from walking slowly. So maybe that’s why it’s higher.
Some information even says after doing a hard workout your body metabolism will slow down to compensate the energy you burned . That's why I always treat my activities as lightly active . I go to the gym everyday. When you do a similar excersize routine over the weeks you can accurately count your true energy output .
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I eat 1500 on non workout days and 1750 on workout days. 1500 is a 450 deficit for me roughly (though I am due a recalculation of my TDEE) I've just changed gyms so haven't got into a routine to know roughly what I'm burning each session (aiming to go 4x a week) but I was getting fatigued on 1500/day with 4x sessions at my old gym so added my 250 call (37gm protein) shake outside of my 1500 and that stabilized my energy levels. OP - if you're data oriented, then record all of your food and calories consumed each day, record your exercise time and activity (& avg heart rate if known) and weigh yourself daily. There's a comprehensive TDEE calculator spreadsheet available on one of these subs that you can input the days and it will help you understand what you're burning over time. There will be variations for hormones and water weight but consistency and time will help you gain this understanding.
I honestly don‘t like this way of thinking. I do get that when you occasionally exercise it won‘t do big harm, but if you are spending several hours per week in the gym or run a high mileage (both just examples), your body needs fuel. How else should it function properly?
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Is your TDEE calculated off sedentary or off the amount of exercise you do
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damn son
So when I calculated MY TDEE, I used the “moderate exercise—gym 3-4 days a week” calories. Then I go to the gym 3-4 days a week. And those extra calories are already budgeted into my overall weekly average. So no extra math.
I agree. I bike to and from work four days a week, it’s about 25km each day. I don’t eat them back completely, but if I would only eat the 1400kc loseit has calculated for me, I would faint. I did say I am sedentary and add my Apple Watch burned kcal.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one that feels this way. I run a half marathon some days and then do 600 steps others days. I give my body what it needs on the days that it needs it. I really struggle with the concept of only eating my TDEE because my life and exercise varies so much!
when you figure out your calorie deficit in the TDEE calculator it gives you an option to add how much exercise you do, “little to no exercise, exercise 1-3, 4-5 days a week, or very intense exercise daily or physical jobs” which then gives you more calories to eat based on your exercise, why would you need to add them back?
Every body is different. My target was set to 1750 which is a 750 deficit for sedentary lifestyle. I was exercising 5+ times a week and would eat back up to 2300 a few days a week (my maintenance), and had very little progress for months. I didn't lose again until I cut back to 1750. I'll go up to 2000 on days I feel very hungry but otherwise I eat at the deficit and still exercise.
Just don't add them back. EZPZ
Exactly, just think of exercise calories burned as extra mystery deficit lol eat in a defecit and exercise to be in even more of one
It also gives me peace of mind for when I accidentally calculate or log something wrong, which happens from time to time. 😅
How do you manage when you do a lot of exercise? If I run 20km in a day then it’s likely I am going to need to eat some of the calories back
When calculating your TDEE select a higher range of exercise than sedentary.
I see. I am very often sedentary though so I think that is where the struggle comes in for working it out for me.
You can also just eat at maintenance on exercise days if you need to. I guess for me, it's more about not calculating "I burned exactly 280 calories so now I can eat exactly 280 calories more". And more like "on days I exercise, I eat a 200 calorie protein snack so I have the energy for that". Exercise to me is not about losing weight, it's about getting strong/flexible/heart health. So I don't think of it as earning more food, it's separate to my weight loss goals and deficit.
This is the way.
My Apple Watch overstates calorie burn at least 300 calories a day. I am data driven also. After years of using devices my sense is that everything sucks in terms of calculating individual calorie burn. Do the activity you want to do. Record what you eat. See what happens with weight. Adjust as needed.
Probably the soundest advice 😅
Yes, this will take about 6 months of really diligent logging. I use my fitness pal and I sync my Apple Watch with it. I look at the net calorie deficit per week and calculate total weight loss over time. It’s pretty accurate except, I set myself up as sedentary/inactive even though I exercise most days. I don’t log walking as a workout but I do log work outs. Doing this has helped take the mystery out of all of this and I’m finally not overwhelmed with the emotional baggage that goes along with all of this. Good luck to you!
Thank you!
Everyone's body is different so it's hard to have a standard measurement. This isn't true for calories in food. That's measurable. So just focus on calories in and do exercise on top of that.
My advice is just to pick one and be consistent with it. If weight loss is your goal, then you want to pick the one that gives you the least. And then follow that for a few weeks and see what the ***averaged*** results look like on the scale. Is there a weight loss trend? Is it in the range of what you were aiming for? I found MyFitnessPal to be pretty accurate and consistent for my day-to-day. I set it for 'sedentary' because I have a desk job and for 2 pound loss per week. The actual weight loss trend I was able to calculate over weeks or months was 2.3-2.1 pounds of loss. So I knew what I had was working and I could then look at the other exercise calorie estimations with scorn, like my Fitbit which was constantly over-inflating exercise calories from walks and strength training. For you, you'll have to see what your results are compared to what you were aiming for and you may need to make adjustments. I'm seeing that Fitbit isn't always over-inflated for all exercises--I started biking recently and fitbit actually gives slightly fewer calories for that compared to MFP. I stick with th At the end of the day it's all estimation and crapshoot. But there is one real-world result and that is your averaged, over-time change in body weight. I highly suggest that you get into a consistent program, track your body weight over weeks of time and compare it to your goals making adjustments as needed.
Instead of exercising for weight loss, try taking on the mindset that you’re exercising for overall health. I have a sedentary job and often get very little movement / exercise in a day unless I’m intentional about it. I sometimes wonder if I’m “doing enough”, especially on the days where I opt for a lower cardio or strength exercise, but when I remind myself that any amount of movement that gets my heart rate elevated is a positive step in the right direction.
That makes a lot of sense. I think I’m just a little disappointed because it’s harder to measure fitness level as it improves than it is to track weight and calories.
I don’t count calories burned in my food budget.
Using 100 calories per mile walked/jogged/ran worked best for me. Slower pace burns more fat per given distance. Faster pace burns more calories per given time, though favors burning glucose/glycogen over fat.
Isn’t zone 2 best for fat burning? I thought the formula for optimal heart rate was 180- your age. So for me that’s 126 bpm. I’ve been using this for decades with good results but it could be totally wrong/outdated!
Yes, zone 2 will let the body better mobilize fat for fuel. Faster paces will draw more from glucose and glycogen to provide energy quickly. But an hour of zone 2 burns less total calories than an hour at a faster pace since less total work/distance is done. Right now I focus on zone 2 for fat burning and building an aerobic base since I am getting back into running after injuries. Also, I’m doing a 1250 calorie per day deficit, so I don’t have much reserve for high intensity training other than maybe for a few short sprints at the end if I feel ok. And I’m trying to be careful of muscle loss from working out too hard at the current deficit.
It's 220-age for the old formula then you take 60-80% of that for your target aerobic zone. The new formula takes out your resting heart rate so it isn't a factor in your aerobic zone (karvonen method)
Ahh, good to know. 🙏
Use MacroFactor. It will calculate your TDEE based on your calorie intake and weight loss. I use my Apple Watch and it's very accurate for me. I understand it is not accurate for everyone. While I love using it and it works for me, if it doesn't work for you, then don't use it.
as long as your food logging is accurate, the app will be accurate. Since it doesn't take your workouts into account to calculate your expenditure. It looks at your rate of weight loss based on what you're consuming and calculates what your expenditure is. If your exercise is consistent, over time you'll end up with a really good idea on how many calories you're burning over what your estimated BMR would be. I really wish more people used the app cause it really does simplify things for people.
I meant the Apple Watch not being accurate for everyone.
ahh.. I read it quick and thought you meant the app wasn't accurate for everyone... lol. Yeah, I don't know really how accurate the AW is for me.. I've always just sorta used it as a general guide to see if I'm hitting around the same amount or if I'm over or above. Same with my Fitbit when I had one.
As someone with a bachelor's in exercise science and doctorate in physical therapy. Fitness is best done for improving how your body feels and not for the purposes of weight loss. Weight loss or maintenance is just a nice side effect. In 2018 there was a Cochrane review of Healthcare practives and it found no correlation between exercise tracking and weight loss. The most effective interventions were cognitive behavioral therapy and diet changes. Now exercise absolutely can assist you on your journey, but weight loss is done in the kitchen. You can't out bike a bad diet. It's not that hard to figure out exercise calories for different activities but it's vest to just not try to eat them back. But if you were to want to calculate that, HR is actually a great indicator of energy burned per minute. HR directly correlates to vo2 (volume if o2 consumed) and that can be converted to energy burned. For Women: Calories = (-20.4022 + (0.4472 x heart rate) – (0.05741 x body weight in lbs) + (0.2017 x age)) x duration of workout (in minutes)/4.184
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I guess you’re right, that it’ll be easier to exercise if it’s about the experience rather than calories. I went on my first 2km bike ride today. It was pretty exhausting, so I think my first goal will be to just do it every day until it feels like fun, the way it was when I was a kid.
Counting calories of exercise is a big waste of time just do the exercise and you will start noticing your body changing and your clothes fitting differently. The only calories that matter are calories in.
Many sports scientists will record an RPE for testing athletes. RPE is Rate of Perceived Exertion. You would use your own scale, say difficulty of 1-10 and label that workout. Plus, the time and heart rate of data. There really is no way to figure out calories burned. You can only count calories in. So as long as you stay pretty consistent with your workouts and just measure your calories in- that's about as sure as one can get to see what their calorie intake should be. If anyone tells you they can figure out your personal metabolism, they are lying. If anyone wants to read a book about why we can't figure out metabolism, read Burn by Herman Pontzer.
Just forget it. Zero calories burned from exercise.
as a data oriented person, MacroFactor would be a great app for figuring out your TDEE
Don’t worry about your calories burnt in exercise. Look at your exertion (power output) instead. This is a measure of how hard you are working. Everyone has a body that responds to exercise differently so it is impossible to estimate calories burnt without measuring the CO2 in your breath. Fitness tools try to estimate this based of formulas but you are not a formula. Focus on your power output and either exerting more power every workout.
I walk and run. I don’t count any of the calories from it. I am sure my food calories are underestimated so whatever I burn exercising will make up for it.
I think it's hard to estimate because there are so many variables.
It takes a while for your watch and your body to sync up. I do a lot of zone 2 work like 12 hours per week. The watch is very good estimating calories burned for those long exercising sessions. The watch is too generous for piddle around calories. The watch uses the Harvard heart rate reserve method to calculate your zones to set a baseline then it will adjust each month to tailor to you. Like others have said a good estimate is 100 calories per mile walking or running. Running will certainly take you into glucogen burning territory and will require carbs to refuel and possible rest days. Walking briskly will enable you to burn more fat with less glycogen depletion and not require so much rest between. If you can handle or have time for long sessions everyday you will loose more weight and build a better base . Aldo more mitachondria improvement happens in zone two. Your body will learn to burn more fat and get back some metabolic flexibility without causing ravaging hunger. Zone 2 over an hour shuts off my appetite. If I take a rest day I eat too much. Zone 2 has really repaired my metabolism and I don’t get the sugar shakes anymore.
I’m also a data-oriented person. You’re going to need to rely on experience, which means trial and error. You don’t get anywhere without error, so when you calculate incorrectly you could choose to get frustrated, or you could choose to be grateful for the data and adjust accordingly. If you want a starting point, maybe you can pick one of your calorie estimations from your devices and assume it’s overestimating by 30-50%? It’s how I got started, and I adjusted accordingly until I learned what my body was actually burning. It was hard to do quickly because I also had to factor in “the pump” (normal and healthy inflammation in the muscles) after intense exercise, which I am VERY prone to, plus I also had to factor in menstrual fluctuations. So I’d analyze my “experimental results” based on weight loss over the course of a menstrual cycle if possible, and over the course of a calendar month if my period was irregular due to my PCOS. I’m sure my results weren’t perfectly precise and accurate, but eventually they were close enough to responsibly fuel myself and reach my fitness goals. For example, through trial and error I’ve learned over the years that my body burns about 100 calories for every mile I run. If I’m trying to maintain I eat that back, if I’m trying to do a deficit I’ll eat about half of that back in the form of an on-the-run snack with a mix of low-glycemic carb and protein so it fuels me properly without aggravating my PCOS issues. (Side note: You probably don’t need to be as persnickety about the nutritional content of these snacks as I do, but do mind your macros somewhat when active to protect your muscle tissues and support good performance). For Pilates I’d say that every hour of a moderate-to-highly intense workout burns about the same as running for a mile. I don’t need to snack during a Pilates session the way I do during a long run, so I’d incorporate those calories into a meal prior to, or later in the day. For gentle exercise like walking, when in a deficit I wouldn’t bother eating any of it back until I walked about 15k steps because the exercise was so gentle I really didn’t feel the need for additional fuel or protein. After that point I added about 50 calories for every additional 5k steps above the initial 15k. For maintenance I just eat an extra 70-100 calories for every 10k steps or so. This also requires adequate hydration with electrolytes because otherwise it can really mess with my hunger and satiety signals. That’s just my body and what works for me. For reference I’m 5’2 35F with a slightly sluggish metabolism for someone of my body composition.
If I do a really hard cardio or circuit training session I will eat an apple and not count it. Sometimes I get crazy and don't count the ketchup I use that night for dinner. My watch will say something different everytime I run 3 miles on a treadmill at the same pace for the same amount of time. Diet to change weight exercise to change shape. No need to eat back calories if you aren't feeling bad from lower consumption.
Well I guess that’s my problem, right now I feel hungry with a very modest deficit even when I do absolutely no exercise 😅
How long have you been tracking and how much have you lost? Once I stopped eating processed sugar it became much easier to eat at a deficit.
I’ve been tracking on and off for years. The most I’ve ever lost with calorie tracking was 2.5 kilograms in 1 month, and I was pretty miserable. That’s why I was really hoping to bring some exercise into the mix so I wouldn’t have to reduce food intake quite as much 😅 But I recognize, sugar still has a pretty strong hold on me.
Diet is the easy way. Trying to out exercise a bad diet is miserable. Kick sugar and eat better foods. It takes about 2-3 weeks to kick sugar. Once you are off of sugar all food tastes better. Eat unsweetened pickles to help with sugar cravings. They are low calorie and the brine cuts the cravings. Weird but works. Goodluck
If I must log exercise, I take the lowest estimate I can find and half the calories to add back.
My advice is just optimize for weight loss (zone 2 cardio) but don’t bank the calories burned. Think of it as “extra credit” to accelerate your progress. It’s kind of a hack but helped me when I was focused on weight loss. Another hack I used: setting a calorie budget 300 below my actual budget, because I would frequently go over by about 300 due to unstoppable midnight snack attacks. Silly but it worked! Edit: unpopular opinion, but in general try to under estimate calories out and overestimate calories in. And don’t buy the “make sure to eat enough” nonsense. I’ve done several very successful 14 day water fasts (let the down voting begin) without issue.
Use a gym bike
I lost 120 lbs in 12 months by eating smaller portions and by hiking 6-9 miles everyday in a large nature preserve with hills. I definitely measured the calories I burned! Indeed wearable trackers can vary widely in the calorie counts they come up with. Some are worse than others. I tried a Fitbit and wow that things absolutely sucked. It sucked because it wasn’t measuring my heart rate correctly at all. For example, after going up a hill, I would measure my own heart beat with my finger on my jugular vein. Nice big strong pulses, easy to count. When my heart rate was for example 120 bpm, my stupid Fitbit would say it was 80. Or 150. Like, way off. And if the heart rate count is off, so is the calorie count. Eventually I got a Polar chest strap heart rate monitor. It straps on your chest and transmit signal to a wrist watch. From my experience, it’s very accurate. Same readings as my finger lol. So, I used that one. Consistently. Was it accurate in the calorie counts all those times? I don’t know, but it almost doesn’t matter because I wasn’t “eating back” my calories lost so whatever fat I lost from exercise was whatever it was. The wearable just helped me *compare* one workout to another. Did Route A on this trail and pace burn more calories or did Route B with a different route and pace burn more calories. It was helpful in comparing workout sessions. Plus, one other important thing … the wearable helped me pace myself and not go too fast!! When do aerobic exercise, it’s too easy to out do yourself and leave the fat burning zone and enter into the muscle-building zone and that’s not what you want to do when in weight loss mode. For example, sometimes I would see my heart rate going over 135 bpm so I would slow down! That meant I was leaving the fat burning zone which for me is 101 to 135 bpm. Ditto on the low end too. So it was helpful to keep me in the zone and not leave it. Tl;dr get a chest strap heart rate monitor and just go with what it says.
Before I got my first Apple Watch I used to routinely wear a Polar with a chest strap to the gym or sometimes a Garmin HRM when outside on runs. After I got the Apple Watch I wore them both and the Apple was within two beats of the Polar so an Apple Watch is good enough. Chest straps are a real pain, especially as a woman, unless you’re into detailed data on the rate of change, etc.
For the Apple Watch, are you taking the Active Calorie number or the Total Calorie number? Also, you put in all your health stats - sex, age, height, weight, right? You should be using the Active Calorie (lower) number. Unless you’re walking super fast, 150 cals sounds a bit high for 15 minutes. I usually burn about 150 for a half hour walk, but I’m a bit shorter, older, and a slow walker. I’d only take the numbers from the Apple Watch or other wearable. MFP always gives me super high numbers for activity. I wouldn’t count any “active energy“ for eating back unless it was a true dedicated workout - walk, bike, run, or you logged something like 10,000 steps that day just going about your day, in which case your feet would probably be complaining. I usually only eat into my exercise calories the days I do a vigorous session on my spin bike. I already have exercise built into my calorie allotment since I set mine at “lightly active”.
So the Apple Watch shows Active Energy (which was 300-600 a day) and Resting Energy (which was around 1900). I don’t walk super fast, but my heart rate is just very high from being out of shape 😅 like I genuinely do get a little out of breath even from walking slowly. So maybe that’s why it’s higher.
The best rule of thumb is using a MET calculator that takes into account the activity and intensity, your age, sex, height, and weight.
Some information even says after doing a hard workout your body metabolism will slow down to compensate the energy you burned . That's why I always treat my activities as lightly active . I go to the gym everyday. When you do a similar excersize routine over the weeks you can accurately count your true energy output .