Calculating calories burned

Naomi Gilker

Hi everyone, 

Like many of you, I have been working on body comp. I have been using http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ to calculate my food intake and the calories I burn during training sessions. Although MyFitnessPal does provide estimates of calories burned for various activities, I would like to get a better estimate of the amount of calories I burn say during a 1 hour EN workout on the trainer.

Has anyone calculated approximately how many calories you burn during the various OS training sessions? I know it varies depending on the individual, but a rough estimate so I can input it into the online tool would be really helpful.

Thanks!

 

Scott Alexander

I find for me, inside or out, OS or regular season, I get to about 650cals/hour on the bike and about 110 cals/mile on running. I still haven't figured out my swim estimates yet; I just usually round out to 500 cals/hour for each session.

If you have any devices, Garmins, power meter, etc, they have their own individual formulas for determining cals burned, and I usually trust those when tracking weight and intake/output.

Peter Noyes

I wear a heart rate monitor and use a garmin watch. That combo is fairly accurate as far as I have read. For a typical 1 hour workout on the trainer I burn anywhere from 650-750 calories. A 2x20' FTP that ends up as 65 minutes is on the higher end of the scale, whereas a shorter VO2 max set ends up at the lower end. For running garmin puts me at almost exactly 100 calories per hour.

I don't know how much it varies based upon body type but I am a 5'9" 135 pound 31 year old male.

zwuba

myfitnesspal undercalculates my run-cals and overshoot on the bike!
I use the calories my Garmin is calculating for me. On the bike I've a PM so the work there in kJ is almost exactly what you've burned!

David Leventhal

I'm pretty much in line with what Scott said - 625-675 calories per hour on the bike; 120-135 per mile on the run. The swim is anyone's guess - I'm usually conservative - for an hour swim I'll put mark it at 400 calories (probably low, but I'd rather error on the conservative side).  I use a Garmin HR monitor to get to that figure.



I'm also on MFP - been tracking for something like 470 days in a row - feel free to add me if you want additional encouragement / accountability - my username is dleventhal

Naomi Gilker

Thanks for your insight. I don't have a PM but I can use a HR monitor for my TM runs (until the snow melts and I can run outside!). For my runs I should be better able to guess-timate my calorie expenditure but will still have to wing it a little bit for my rides, but I think that under-estimating is probably safer than the alternative. Thanks again!