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Calories Burned from S-B-R?

 Tracking calories these days and was wondering how everyone else does it.  Seems to me like the estimates in livestrong.com are hugely inflated.  If I followed them I would be gaining tons of weight.  Same with the readings on my treadmill.  Also always try to over estimate the calories I eat and under estimate what I burn.  I have been figuring for me at mid 180's I burn about 100 calories running a mile...thoughts?  biking is seems like the KJ showing on the PM would be a WAG, 40 minute on the trainer doing the 2:30's had me at 482 KJ, rounded down to 400, seem about right?

How about swimming?

Any thoughts?

Comments

  • Hey Chris! As someone who has lost 80lbs I’ve done my share of calorie counting. I found Livestrong to be hugely inflated as well. What has worked for me is I use what my Garmin (currently the 310XT and 800) says for running and cycling. For swimming I use Livestrong’s figure but I input my body weight as 100lbs. That brings the Livestrong swimming down to a reasonable number. When I’m trying to lose weight I'll allocate 1/2 of what I’ve burned to my calorie budget and take the other 1/2 as weight loss. This has worked well for me and I’m four years into the process. My N=1, hope it helps!
  • @ Chris, as it turns out I've written quite a few posts in my blog about the calorie thing...most recently yesterday about the bike:

    http://www.irondaughterirondad.com/...ody-knows/



    In part:

    if you want to lose weight, there’s a HUGE difference in the calculators, so you could think that you’re burning more calories than you actually are.

    …like for my 1 hour ride yesterday, the difference between 664 and 1181 calories…so over 500 calories difference…these are the 2 numbers in 2 different programs that I use…multiply that by a 3 hour ride…that’s a 1,500 calorie difference in your daily accounting.

    For me I use a PowerTap, and since it’s generally the lowest calculator of all, I just plug in that number..at least I’ll err on the low side.

  • I too use my my garmin 310xt or my powertap reading from my joule.

    I use loseit to track my food and exercise - Rich talked about it in his body comp/weight lose wiki/post. I've been using loseit for the last 2 years when I wanted to get serious about shedding the weight. Prior to that I used Training Peaks for it but I found the loseit site to be much easier to use. The mobile app for loseit is very nice and the website is just as good. It really lets you get a handle on your diet/food choices if you log what you eat. You can create custom foods, make recipes. After about a month of logging food, you'll have all the food you normally eat all ready to plug into the day.

    You can get calorie estimates for loseit but they tend to be a little high IMO. I just make sure that the calorie burn number is close.
  • As a general rule, I use:
    S: is a guesstimate, but it was based on Livestrong/daily plate when I used to use it; but I always overestimated my intensity (if I thought my swim was high intensity, then I used "medium" on Livestrong/daily plate to show a lower cal count).
    B: whatever my PM says for cals on the bike
    R: What my garmin (w/ footpod) says. If I have to SWAG it, 110cals/mile
  • Posted By Chris G on 13 Jan 2011 07:41 AM

     Tracking calories these days and was wondering how everyone else does it.  Seems to me like the estimates in livestrong.com are hugely inflated.  If I followed them I would be gaining tons of weight.  Same with the readings on my treadmill.  Also always try to over estimate the calories I eat and under estimate what I burn.  I have been figuring for me at mid 180's I burn about 100 calories running a mile...thoughts?  biking is seems like the KJ showing on the PM would be a WAG, 40 minute on the trainer doing the 2:30's had me at 482 KJ, rounded down to 400, seem about right?

    How about swimming?

    Any thoughts?



    600cal/hr for a guy your size doing that kind of work sounds low to me.  I'd say if you use that number, the pounds will be melting away, and you'll be quite hungry.  I was thinking something around 800 would be closer.

    I occasionally take my heart rate after a swim set and for anything over about 300 yards on a 1:25 pace it's rarely above 140.  A 100 or 200 on a 1:15 pace might get it into the 150s.  Based on that, I've never thought swimming could burn more than about 500 cal/hr for me, and I'm 6'3" and between 174-182 depending on the time of year.  If the EN swim workouts are anything like the bike and run work we've been doing, I suspect my HR will change.  

    I've never counted calories, and I can tell you my weight before I get on my scale to within 2 pounds every single time just based on how I look and feel.   If I want to lose some weight I just go around a little hungrier.  Having said that, I doubt I have the discipline to get into the mid 160s, despite knowing how much faster I could potentially go.  

  • I use 100 calories per mile running, once I hit go under 150lbs, I start calling it 90 calories.

    Bike: Use KJ.....SEE below

    Swimming, I've head a few coaches say about 100 calories per 400M so I use that as a proxy.

    So I was a little off: See below

    Another feature you will notice on your

    PowerTap is the kilojoules reading. Kilojoules is a measure of the amount

    of total work that you performed during the workout and this is an

    important component when considering your caloric expenditure.  

    Although kilojoules (KJ) and Kilocalories (Kcal) are different measures,

    you are able to estimate how many Kcals you used during a workout by

    monitoring the KJ accumulated.  There is an approximate conversion of:



    4.2 KJ to 1 Kcal



    and human metabolic efficiency of work performed on a bicycle is

    estimated at 23 - 25%.  Based on this information, you can then take the

    KJ of mechanical work and extrapolate a 1 - 1 measure.  For example, for

    a given ride you perform 1500 KJ, so based on the information

    discussed above, you can estimate that your caloric expenditure for the

    workout is 1500 Kcals.  



    This information will allow you to monitor your caloric intake, which can

    help you manage your body weight.  Proper calorie management will also

    improve the recovery process, thus allowing you to come back and

    perform subsequent workouts.

     

     

     

  • A svelte guy like you .... counting calories?  Should I be nervous about whiteface in June?

    IMO calorie counting basically amounts to analysis paralysis.  It's essentially impossible to determine your metabolic efficiency across the full spectrum of activity, and that's really what is required.  In reality, you would need to track a metric similar to normalized power (rate of energy utilization) in real time, which would then be -integrated across a full 24 hour period.  This would give you a net energy consumption for the day, with a dynamic representation of physical stress.  Like I said, analysis paralysis.

    I refer to normalized power (as used on the bike) because it is designed to account for the non-linearities in the body's response to physical stress.  As the demand for energy increases, the body must work harder - not only to meet the increased output but to keep the system (thermodynamically) stable.  Without direct knowledge of that thermodynamic profile, caloric consumption can only be ballparked.  You're probably using the best practice which is to overestimate intake, and underestimate consumption.  I've seen some runners have success by gradually stepping down their daily caloric intake until (1) it starts to affect their performance, or (2) they start to feel the need to "top off" at the end of the day (above their prescribed intake).  At that point, you can correlate average caloric intake to hours of some activity X.  It's trial and error, but certainly more specific than livestrong.com.

  • I've found my bodybugg to be accurate and motivating.

    But I've also found typical gym machines to over-estimate the calorie burn and most websites under-estimate the amount of calories in food and overestimate food too...that creates a problem.

    I've found that powermeters are reasonably accurate for calorie burn. Between that and my body bug I've noticed that 10min at a Z2/3 effort is roughly 100calories. As the effort increases so does the burn. But as a general rule 1hr = 600kcal depending on intensity. On the really hard Z4 stuff you can burn quite a bit more.

    For running, obviously the general rule is 100cal/mile. I think this depends on weight. I am 6'2 and 200lbs. I may burn a bit more. Lighter guys burn a bit less.

    With swimmig I always underestimate time and intensity. So if I swam for 30 minutes really hard, I'll call it 25 minutes medium.

    At the end of the day a defecit of 3600 calories = 1lb loss. So take a week or two and measure everything as best you can and weigh yourself. If you lost close to what you expected then you are doing pretty good. If you didn't...think about what may have changed and adjust. It is not perfect by any means, but that is how I ended up losing about 60lbs with only 10 or so to go. In fact I lost 5lbs in the last 1.5 weeks...and haven't suffered from it.

    My biggest thing...I always eat a MINIMUM of 2700kcal which is what testing tells me I burn on an average non-workout day. 2700 makes sure my body runs without any troubles. I use workouts to burn above and beyond that...and I try to carry a 750 cal defecit for 1.5lbs a week.
  • I base mine off of loseit and also round down similar to others.

    I typically just enter the time of the workout in there and also round it down by just using my EP or equivelant for the entire workout even though we do hard intervals.

    Swim typically is ~600 cal per hour of swimming not including the rest periods
    Bike is ~750 ( I adjust based of of KJ and round down)
    Run is ~850 (~90 per mile)
  • I use the food label and calorieking.com to determine how many calories I'm eating. I find it very accurate, but what I didn't find accurate is what I THOUGHT a serving size was and how much the food weighed. I keep a kitchen scale at work now(I get a lot of weird looks and questions) and keep a scale at home.  I even weigh apples before I start to it and the portion I don't eat for the exact weight.

    I measure and calc everything that goes into my pie hole now. Down 7lbs since Christmas. My body burns 1200 calories at rest, so its tough to loss weight without tracking everything and getting as accurate as I can with food/excerise. I could easily plow though 3000 calories a day which is what ballooned me up to 160 prior to Xmas.

    I generally eat about 2000 calories at day with the OS and burn around 600-1000 calories through excerise depending on what I do....

     

     

     

  • I just started tracking my nutrition back in October. Mostly to learn, but it is a bit addictive and you realize that just by tracking your behavior is modified. My focus has been tracking the intake (about which I have become increasingly OCD, to the point where I own 3 food scales, including a portable one!!). I am less obsessive about tracking the burn rate.



    For intake I use TrainingPeaks. Whenever possible I use their library of foods from the USDA database, because I find the quality of the "community"-entered foods to be highly variable. I also use NutritionData.com to build recipes for things I make at home and eat a lot, so it then can be entered as a single food in TrainingPeaks but still have the complete micronutrient breakdown.



    For calorie burn I use whatever my TrainingPeaks says. I think it takes the Garmin values, actually, although in my profile it is set with an hourly burn rate of 505/750/800 for S/B/R based on a set of parameters I entered. I re-calc it every so often but it doesn't change much. It also has my RMR at 1547 calories/day (based on 35 years old, 5'5, 137 lbs and 12.3% BF). I have a feeling some of these burn rates are pretty variable because when I train with an HR monitor using my Edge 500 the calories get calculated by the Edge using an HR-based methodology that ends up MUCH lower -- like 500 calories / hour on the bike vs. 750.

  •  Glad to see that we are all pretty much on the same page.  I am down 10 since the height around xmas so I think I will just keep up what I have been doing.  It always amazes me how you never really realize just how fat you are until you start losing weight...

    I am goin lil peep by march 

  • @ Jenn - Can you help me understand what you mean by "When I’m trying to lose weight I'll allocate 1/2 of what I’ve burned to my calorie budget and take the other 1/2 as weight loss." I am trying to lose weight and I don't understand what you mean - but having lost so much weight (awesome job BTW) I trust what you say. Thanks in advance.

    Greg
  • I've been using the Livestrong MyPlate since the holidays, it works out nicely with the iPhone app that they have that synchs with the data online. I use the calories from my HRM for bike and run, and I like the idea of using the calculation for one less intensity level for the swim. So far I have dropped 5lbs after putting about 5lbs on over the holidays (I wasn't tracking then!)
  • I'm curious - what's the advantage of eating based on an estimated calories in/out equation rather than simply listening to your body's hunger cues?
  • Posted By Greg Perron on 13 Jan 2011 12:02 PM

    @ Jenn - Can you help me understand what you mean by "When I’m trying to lose weight I'll allocate 1/2 of what I’ve burned to my calorie budget and take the other 1/2 as weight loss." I am trying to lose weight and I don't understand what you mean - but having lost so much weight (awesome job BTW) I trust what you say. Thanks in advance.



    Greg



     

    Hey Greg, sure thing… I should have elaborated.

    Losing or maintaining weight will never be natural for me so I keep track of pretty much everything in and everything out.   Small price to pay for being a normal size, IMO. 

    Jenn's Math:

    • What I do is allocate myself a daily budget based on a “base” and then what I burn.
    • Right now my base is 1,800 calories and I am trying to lose a few more pounds.  Something about that damn FTP/kg ratio...
    • I add 1/2 of what I burn to that for my daily budget. 
    • For example, today I burned 562 on the bike. 
    • 1,800 + 1/2 (562) = 2,081. My budget for calories today is 2,081. 
    • This math has me losing about a pound a week. 
    • Because I’m not really burning an extra 3,600 calories per week, I know that some of that is coming from a lowered base and some is coming from the exercise. 
    • I have had this math as high as 2,200 per day plus ALL of the calories burned and basically maintained throughout Ironman training. 

    The bottom line is if you use the same metrics for calories burned (being honest with yourself!) and calories expended, you essentially turn yourself into one big science experiment.  If the math doesn’t produce the desired result, you know it’s off and you can just adjust how you do the math.   Eventually for a lot of people it becomes natural to have a feel for what they can eat on a given day.  Unfortunately it’s not easy for me so I just keep doing the math to hold myself accountable.  I have a method that doesn’t really take much time or interfere with the *rest* of my (somewhat normal) life. 

    Help?  Make sense? 

     

  • Greg -

    I tend to think of it as a bank account and I use (insert any number of mentioned sites - but I like loseit) to track my daily balance. You can set it up to roughly figure out what your calorie consumption should be per day to lose X amount of pounds per week.

    Right now I'm set up to lose 1 lb per week. My daily budget is roughly 1900 calories for that desired effect which equates to the 3600 weekly calorie deficit. I found that my inputs are close enough to where I'm losing 1lb or more per week.

    When I eat, it's like taking money out of the bank. When I exercise, it's like a deposit. I log throughout to day to give myself a picture of how the day is going and make sure I don't overdraw my account. Bonus days are when I exercise and don't feel the need to consume too many more than the allotted 1900. It just depends on how my recovery goes.

    Oh and to answer the S portion of the original question, I plug in 500 calories for an hour swim and that seems reasonable based on my other activities and the calculated calorie burn/ perceived effort.
  • FWIW, there was an interesting wattage thread last week that touched on some of this:

  • What Ken said, that's how I view this. Exercise earns me the right to eat and not be hungry all the time.

    Kevin, many of us (me) are a very poor judge of portion size and/or the calorie content of most foods. Once you start tracking what you eat and burn, you find just how easy it is to put 600cals down your neck and not be full = you just sorta nullified the calorie burning potential of that 45' run in the morning.

    As a guy who grew up a competitive swimmer in the south...my default calorie intake is probalby north of 3k per day. If it's in front of me...I eat it so logging everything on both sides usually helps me apply some data and discipline to the problem.

    Just the other day I told Joanne I was back on the horse and was losing weight again. She said "I'm not worry about you using weight. I worried about what's gonna happen if you ever stop exercising for more than 2mo. You'll turn into a fat bastard "

  • I keep it simple....I just eat
  • Posted By Rich Strauss on 13 Jan 2011 04:05 PM

    Just the other day I told Joanne I was back on the horse and was losing weight again. She said "I'm not worry about you using weight. I worried about what's gonna happen if you ever stop exercising for more than 2mo. You'll turn into a fat bastard "

    After my first IMWI in 2008, nobody told me this beast of an appetitie I had developed would not subside with a decreased training load.  Sept of 08 I weighed 163, by January 1st after the holiday's I was a portly 189.  I had to work my ass off to get it back down.  I still struggle with the holidays/end of season time.  I'm getting better cause I know what to expect but I just don't feel like counting calories after a long season and all the good holiday chow.  Case in point, this past IMWI I got down to 158 but right now I'm hovering at 174.

    I always start counting come Jan 1st.  Weight is coming off every time I play the budget game.

  • @Ken...WERD, I'm exactly the same. I really, really need to wrap my head around making better choices when confronted with BAD choices...or burn a minimum of 1000cals/day and eat anything I want .

    Sitting on 1700cals left to eat today and friggin' hungry......

  • @Rich

    I'm sitting on 1457 but it would be higher if the wife didn't make chocolate chip cookies for the group of kids she was watching due to an early school release. I told myself... I'm only going to have 1 cookie... Well that was 1 X 5. I hate when she bakes that stuff. Oh and my daughter is a girl scout - so cookies there to during the fall .... get that $hit out of the house.

    I need 1200 - 1500 calorie bump to eat anything I want and not have it impact the scale the next day. Those are my CHEAT days in season.
  • JnI are having Indian tonight. Got a feeling I'll go postal on that bread/crack they serve. I might take Sonny on a 15mi walk beforehand...poor lil' guy...

  • I've thrown my leg over the top tube a few times since Xmas just so I can eat dinner More watts more food

  • FWIW, I had 'grown' out to 77 kgs with all the festive cheer.  However, joining da Haus and reading Coach Rich and others body composition stuff really motivated me to make myself accountable.

    I already had a diet that I liked to eat designed by a Sports food guy that was designed to loose fat.  It was aimed at a rest day burn and I could add fuel if I trained.

    So I started using it again and weighed everything because I tend to make portions too big.  I just track differences from that diet — if I ate more I counted those calories have to have an offsetting deficit over later days in order to get it in balance. I use my Powertap and my Garmin 310xt to calculate calories burned.

    I like this approach because I am only adding up deviations away from the plan.

    While it's early days, I have lost 5.5 kgs since mid December.  This is more than the energy burned would suggest.  I need to fine tune it I think, although its better to have this outcome than the opposite.

    BTW, I am eating huge amounts of salad and green vegetables.  My downfall is beer, red wine, which usually leads to cheese and crackers and other terrible choices

  • This is a very timely thread for me. About 10 days ago I started tracking my eating habits on LoseIt. I set up the plan to lose 1 pound per week with the goal of coming down from 178 to 163. I've really enjoyed observing my eating habits and am dismayed by the amount of garbage snacking I do throughout the day. I've lost 6 pounds in 10 days since starting. I'm going to adjust the plan to set a higher intake of calories to slow this down. I think the problem is that LoseIt doesn't account for the continuing burn throughout the day of calories due to the higher intensities of the EN OS workouts. I've always heard that when you go hard, your body burns hot for a much longer time. Any opinions?
  • @Elly

    So I've gone through this weight loss cycle numerous times and while this is my first EN off season, in prior years I did high intensity EN type cycling during the off season with base running and swimming so I have 3 years personal observations n=1 with two of it using loseit.

    I too experience this same thing when I first start the weight lose cycle but then it starts to taper off. Why? I can't tell you for sure but I think as my body adjusts to what I put in my pie hole has an effect. Typically the salty snacks go and all the typical holiday food and overeating stops. I think quite a bit is the excess water loss and cleaning out the pipes so to speak and my body is in this confused state. For example, Jan 2nd I was staring in disgust at 181 and now I'm sitting at 174.5 and have been sitting in this range +/- the 3 days with no change in calorie consumption. My body has figured out this is how its going to be and by week two it's figured it out and the weight doesn't come off nearly as fast.

    So it could be that you have a higher metabolic rate. I agree you don't want to lose too much weight too fast but consider how you feel as well. Do you still have the same energy levels, etc? If you still feel okay and have the energy to do the workouts AND recover, give it a little longer to see if the body adjusts. If not, I agree you should probably up the caloric intake so you aren't losing too much weight too fast.
  • @ Ken: Thanks for the input! I suspect sudden water loss too, but will keep a close eye on it.

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