My Fitness Pal

[beccaB]

I know there was a thread on this recently but I can't find it. I just put this app on my phone and I like everything about it except that it lets you have too many calories if you log in cardiovascular exercise. A ride of avg. speed of 12-14 mph for almost 2 hours adds up to be 1000 calories and my husband's Garmin says 500. I can modify the calories burned if I want to , but where would I find a more reliable source?

[Irulan]

I know there was a thread on this recently but I can't find it. I just put this app on my phone and I like everything about it except that it lets you have too many calories if you log in cardiovascular exercise. A ride of avg. speed of 12-14 mph for almost 2 hours adds up to be 1000 calories and my husband's Garmin says 500. I can modify the calories burned if I want to , but where would I find a more reliable source?


Search keyword: myfitnesspal brings up all these threads
http://forums.teamestrogen.com/search.php?searchid=3990782

My understanding of the app, and I use it almost daily, is that not everyone earns the same amount of calorie burn from exercise. It's based on a calculation from your set up: age, level of activity, current weight, target weight, and planned weight loss (lbs per week) Now, I can't speak to the true accuracy of it, but when comparing notes with friends who do the same workout class as I do, we are all given different numbers for the same entry.

I don't know that there's a truly, 100% way to get your actual calories burned without going very scientific. What I do know is that for me, I followed the apps guidelines exactly and lost 9% body fat in 12 weeks.

(for 120 min of 12-14 mph I do not get 1000, I get 850)

[zoom-zoom]

I suspect that the #s MFP gives are based upon really heavy bikes...hybrids or even mountain bikes. All of the cyclists who frequent MFP claim that the # MFP gives them is WAY higher than what they get if they wear a HRM. MFP also considers 16-20mph cycling to be "very fast" and that's their highest effort/speed designation. 16mph would be very fast on my CX bike with knobby tires, but on my carbon road bike (which weighs 3-4# less) that would be a relatively moderate pace for me.

[beccaB]

Search keyword: myfitnesspal brings up all these threads
http://forums.teamestrogen.com/search.php?searchid=3990782

My understanding of the app, and I use it almost daily, is that not everyone earns the same amount of calorie burn from exercise. It's based on a calculation from your set up: age, level of activity, current weight, target weight, and planned weight loss (lbs per week) Now, I can't speak to the true accuracy of it, but when comparing notes with friends who do the same workout class as I do, we are all given different numbers for the same entry.

I don't know that there's a truly, 100% way to get your actual calories burned without going very scientific. What I do know is that for me, I followed the apps guidelines exactly and lost 9% body fat in 12 weeks.

(for 120 min of 12-14 mph I do not get 1000, I get 850)

What kind of diet did you follow, was there a ration of carbs to protein that was different than the default setting in the app?

[Irulan]

What kind of diet did you follow, was there a ration of carbs to protein that was different than the default setting in the app?

All I did was enter age,weight, weight goal, followed the settings. I did have some additional guidelines through a trainer at my gym for eating for recovery/exercise, portion size, exercise, high value foods and so on. I didn't and don't follow a "diet". I watch portion size, stay away from processed foods & junk, cook from scratch, make healthy choices and eat 4-5 small meals a day. The app allows you to see where you are at for balance, various nutritional components and I would just adjust accordingly.

[Eden]

.... All of the cyclists who frequent MFP claim that the # MFP gives them is WAY higher than what they get if they wear a HRM......

Now I find that if I wear a HR monitor with my Garmin it cuts the calories so severely I'd starve.... (by about 1/3 compared to without) while it pretty well agrees with MFP without the HRM. As I've lost about 10 lbs over the last few months using either the MFP#'s or my Garmin's -no hr monitor, I'm willing to say if you input your data correctly in the first place that it's pretty accurate.

I also don't follow any particular diet. As with Irulan I avoid junk food, choose healthy foods, but in the end a calorie is a calorie.... some foods certainly carry more of a calorie punch for their volume/make you feel more or less full etc, but they all burn the same in the end and if you eat less than you burn, you'll lose weight.

[chatnoire]

All I did was enter age,weight, weight goal, followed the settings. I did have some additional guidelines through a trainer at my gym for eating for recovery/exercise, portion size, exercise, high value foods and so on. I didn't and don't follow a "diet". I watch portion size, stay away from processed foods & junk, cook from scratch, make healthy choices and eat 4-5 small meals a day. The app allows you to see where you are at for balance, various nutritional components and I would just adjust accordingly.

This is what the boyfriend and I have been doing, and we've been at it for 2 months now. I'm down 13 pounds, he's down 19, and I wouldn't say we've been super diligent (there have been friday night fish fry dinners, happy hour afternoons, etc.)

What I love about MFP is that it keeps you aware, more than anything. If I have a glass of wine, I know what I've just put into my body, and that makes it less likely I'll have an entire pint of Ben and Jerrys ice cream. Even if the app over-calculates, I try to at least log the work I'm doing.

Also, as a vegetarian, I've been focusing on sodium and protein - pre-packaged foods often have way more sodium than necessary, and protein is hard to come by in veggies. So it's forced me to be more creative about my nutrition. I've learned to like kale, eggs, and beans a lot more than I thought I would. ;)

[Irulan]

This is what the boyfriend and I have been doing, and we've been at it for 2 months now. I'm down 13 pounds, he's down 19, and I wouldn't say we've been super diligent (there have been friday night fish fry dinners, happy hour afternoons, etc.)

What I love about MFP is that it keeps you aware, more than anything. If I have a glass of wine, I know what I've just put into my body, and that makes it less likely I'll have an entire pint of Ben and Jerrys ice cream. Even if the app over-calculates, I try to at least log the work I'm doing.

Also, as a vegetarian, I've been focusing on sodium and protein - pre-packaged foods often have way more sodium than necessary, and protein is hard to come by in veggies. So it's forced me to be more creative about my nutrition. I've learned to like kale, eggs, and beans a lot more than I thought I would. ;)

no kidding on the sodium in pre packaged foods! Even so called "healthy" ones. If anyone can ever find a low sodium Siracha type product, let me know.

[bluebug32]

It's hard to find reliable calorie burn information. Even heart rate monitors tend to estimate on the high side and the machines at gyms are usually off as well. I'm on MFP and I find that what works best is to just input the calorie burn straight from my Garmin, which is typically a few hundred calories lower than MFP's estimation. Even the calorie counts for the same food can vary on MFP. My advice: use it to help guide you nutritionally, but understand that it's just an estimate and adjust your diet/fitness accordingly.

[beccaB]

I decided to modify the calories fitness pal says I burned to about half. Except for the week preceding a century ride. then I have to eat more.

[goldfinch]

It is fairly easy to figure out how many calories you take in, but it is almost impossible to figure out how many you burn outside of a lab. All the tools are not accurate. The closest is probably a power meter. The next closest probably a heart rate monitor. The problem is that there are too many variables and when you estimate so many variables there is potential for error stacked on top of error leading to sometimes wildly inaccurate results. You might enter your age, sex and height into a heart rate monitor but the monitor still doesn't know your fat mass, personal metabolic rate, individual heart rate differences, your general fitness and health, your stress level, the air temperature (heart rate goes up when it is hot), and even your adaptation to a type of exercise, all of which can effect calories burned or the estimate of calories burned.

Calculators that estimate without heart rate, like online tools, are so inaccurate as to be useless. They add the variable of guessing your effort. Twelve miles an hour may be easy effort on the flats and a bear on the hills. Sixteen mph may be hard effort for some and easy for others, or hard in a head wind and easy with a tail wind, hard on a rough road, easy on a smooth. Easy on the road bike and next to impossible on a mountain bike. Etc.

[beccaB]

I do know that there are days that if I stick to 1450 calories, to lose the 7 or so pounds I want gone, I will crash and burn. On the days I only do strength training I can stick to 1450 and feel ok. But not bike days. So the credit for half of what fitness pal says I burned seems to get me through most of those regular bike riding days, but maybe not the long hauls.

[bathedinshadow]

As others have mentioned, without a HR monitor, the estimates are pretty pointless. They can vary SO much. I don't use myfitnesspal, but instead mammyride. Not because it's better, but because it's more exercise focused and keeps track of a lot of different stats. So here is an example as to how completely off those estimates can be. Yesterday I did a 3 hour ride. My average HR was 153, with substantial time above 170. On my iPhone app, it said I burnt 1600 calories. Likely an overestimate. But I was really pushing it, so it's actually probably not too far off. When I put it into mapmyride, it said 600 calories. That's not factoring in my HR, but rather just the distance I rode and how long it took. It doesn't consider that I climbed 3000 feet and much of the downhill was actually me popping the wheel up and over 1-2 foot roots (lots of effort). When you're connected to a HR monitor, that's indirectly considering that.

And also like others have said, everybody has a different calorie burn. All of these measurements are estimates. Some are more accurate than others, but none of them are actually correct. So many factors that you can't measure.

The best thing you can do is trial and error in terms of losing weight. And sadly, once you lose some weight, it's likely you'll have to trial and error again as your body will be changing.