Ignore The Numbers
This New York Times article by Gina Kolata talks about the impossibility of counting calories burned while exercising.
Despite the displays on machines at gyms, with their precise-looking calorie counts, and despite the official-looking published charts of exercise and calories, it can be all but impossible to accurately estimate of the number of calories you burn…
One reason for the calorie-count skepticism is that two individuals of the same age, gender, height, weight and even the same level of fitness can burn a different amount of calories at the same level of exertion…
There also is a seldom mentioned complication in calculating calories burned during exercise: you should subtract off the number of calories you would be using if you did nothing.
I never pay attention to the little “calories burned” display on the elliptical; exercise is likely to make me eat better and avoid treats, because I feel like I’ve negated the effects of the exercise if I do eat something high in calories. I guess I’m doing something right by ignoring that number, since it’s wrong anyway, and exercising just for the sake of it. Thanks for the article, Kari!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Exercise, Health, Science, Weight Loss
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Interesting, I didn’t know about subtracting sedentary calories, but it makes sense.
I pay more attention to making sure I do 5 miles. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the calories burned reading.
I do look at the little “calories burned” read out on the elliptical machine, but only as a day by day comparison with itself. I figure, its one way of looking at how much effort I put into the machine. I “burned 800 calories” yesterday and I want to make sure I do the same amount of work or more today. I also, of course, watch my time and resistance and such. I don’t actually believe that I burned 800 real life calories and even if i did, I would have no clue what to make of that number, as I never have any clue how many calories I eat any way, nor do I believe the whole “calories in, calories out” thing.
I also liked the bit about how the more familiar you are with the exercise, the less calories you burn doing it – because your body naturally learns to accomplish remembered tasks more efficiently.
Yeah, the calories in/calories out equation is gar-bage because it works only as an abstraction. It falls apart when you try to start plugging numbers in. And anyway the vast majority of the calories you burn per day has nothing to do with physical activity or exercise — the calories you need just to stay alive will totally swamp it. Exercise is *fantastic* for health and fitness, but calorie burning and weight loss? That’s really just more weight loss industry mythmaking.
I don’t pay attention to the calories burned, either. Sometimes I look at it, but I don’t bother counting it into my efforts to be healthy.
A lot of this just goes to show, though, that a straight “Calorie counting” approach to weight loss, if that’s what you’re after, doesn’t necessarily mean that if you burn 3500 extra cals a week you’re gonna lose a pound. Cos there’s no way to tell for sure that you’re doing it.
Fatfu, it’s true that you burn a lot more calories from daily activity than from exercise (unless you’re extremely active), but that doesn’t mean that exercise is not useful for weight loss. Even if you only burn a couple hundred calories a day from exercise, it adds up over time and will contribute to weight loss (unless you compensate by eating more or being otherwise less active). And, exercise builds muscle, which will boost your metabolic rate.
The numbers actually do add up, they’re just complicated and difficult to measure!
Your analysis is too simplistic La Wade, the body can metabolically adjust to exercise not just by raising your appetite it can make adjustment through adjusting your desire and inclination to move. If you press on, it may generate feelings of distress that can be overwhelming. You can only know through experience but you must be able to take note of your body’s responses without feeling you are doing something wrong.
I think Lindsay’s point about the body learning to be more efficient, suggests to me that it thrives on variety and spontenaiety. That is living the activity in the moment as opposed to going through the motions. Although maybe this can be mitigated by your imagination.
Well, I didn’t say that weight loss with exercise was effortless. But studies have shown that the vast majority of people who lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off use daily exercise as part of that effort. It’s definitely been my own experience that exercise facilitates weight loss and maintenance.
Anyway, to bring the discussion back to the original post, while it’s true that the “calories burned” number on the treadmill is an approximation, that doesn’t mean that exercise doesn’t actually burn calories or that the number is completely worthless. Granted, if you use that number along with an approximation of the number of calories you’ve eaten in a given week and an approximation of your metabolic rate and you try to use that to calculate how much weight you’re supposed to be losing, you are bound to be either disappointed or pleasantly surprised. But you can still use the numbers, you just have to learn to gauge them by what actually happens with your body.
I look at distance covered and the heart rate. But even the heart rate thing can’t be all that accurate, especially on an elliptical machine when my hands are in constant motion.
The only number I truly care about these days is my pants size. The scale is easily swayed by external factors (time of day I weigh in, if I drank a liter of water before weighting in, etc). But when I can move to a smaller pants size (and I buy the same brand, so it’s not just a matter of one mfr’s labels being different than another’s), I know that my work is paying off.
I also try to change up what I’m doing. I may focus on weight training for a week or two, and then switch over to swiming or dance aerobics. That way I don’t get bored AND I’m always keeping my body on it’s toes!
If you wear a hr monitor with a chest strap, customized for your height, weight, and gender, you can get an accurate calorie count. Polar makes a really good one.
A trainer at my gym told me that the heart rate/calories burned thing is a load of crap and that I should just set a time or mileage that i want to meet. I’ve always wondered about those machines.
I do love my heart rate monitor for keeping track of stuff like this. Esp for big girls, like me, calorie burning calculations are completely unreliable.
I had the Polar, and I liked it, except the underwire in my sports bra futzed with the chest strap. Now I have a Mio, which I love beyond all reason. Not just because it has interchangeable watchbands, and one of them is pink.
While calories burned isn’t really the point, it’s great to keep me on track and motivated to exercise, and keeping my heart rate where it should be.
My fave part is the recovery heart rate feature, which shows that I am gradually getting into better shape. I started out as ‘poor” and am now into the “fair” range- occasionally, I even get a “good”!
That’s all the info I need- the number on the scale can go %^&* itself.
I use one of those online calorie counter things that takes your weight and age into consideration when adding up the calories your burning during exercise. i would like to think that its more accurate.