[2frustrated]

Okay, so if you look at the exercise bit in fitday, it has basal, lifestyle and exercise portions.

eg Basal 1600 - and basal is the amount you burn staying alive...

So lifestyle, is a bit added on top... For extra moving around.

Then when you add exercise, it adds say 250kcals for 2 miles of running. So, my problem with fitday is - that 250kcals that it adds for running INCLUDES the calories you burn just staying alive!!!

So of those 250kcals, say it took you half an hour to run those 2 miles, well that includes 40kcals of your basal, so effectively for the time spent exercising, is fitday adding extra basal calories....?

This is the reason I don't like the exercise bit in fitday. Otherwise it rocks!

What do you think?

[Meg]

Frus, I love Fitday for food journaling, but if I tried to make SENSE out of its exercise calculations, I'd be driven to Twinkies! According to Fitday, I should no longer exist in corporeal form since I theoretically burn far more calories than I ingest. But I assure you that I am still very solidly here!

My advice is to save yourself a lot of grief and ignore the exercise calculations in Fitday.

[2frustrated]

Oh I do!! You can be sure of that!!!

I was talking to someone about using fitday and she asked whether I logged all my activities, like showering, stair climbing etc... I thought that that would grossy overestimate calorie expenditure and it just got me thinking about the way they have the exercise calories set up

[buddha belly]

I think it might be factored in already as it calculates.

For instance, I have myself set up as bed bound - be conservative right? Then I put in my exercise, which I think it does not give me many calories burned for - might just be because it can only pick from a limited amount of items,but... I put in housecleaning, etc, and it adjusts my "lifestyle" calories burned downward.

I also put in 8 hours of sleeping, just to see what it would do and it gave me -0- calories burned. Also for sitting -0- calories.

I have an office job - it only gives me 1/2 calories a minute for that - and reduces my lifestyle calories burned. I kill myself walking over 6 miles on the treadmill for over 1 1/2 hours and it gives me less than 350 calories, and reduces my lifestyle calories.

[blues4miles]

I just do it all manually. I have myself set as sedentary/bed-bound, and I think the basal is pretty close to my true maintenance number at this time. However, it thinks for "lifestyle" I'll burn an extra 252 calories every day. For me that's at least an hour of good, heart-pounding, calorie-burning activity! I'm not sure how someone who is bed-bound is supposed to get that kind of activity in So I just ignore that, and add my exercise manually to figure out deficits, etc.

[Heather]

I use nutridiary, but in this regard it sounds very similar.

I set my lifestyle to lightly active (or whatever its called when you say you don't really move at work). I enter my "exercise" to track the minutes and don't really focus on the calories burned for planning purposes

However, what's interesting is that when I compare over time the amount of weight it says I should lose and what I actually lost, they are pretty similar. So maybe the system I'm using works relatively well for me!

[chick_in_the_hat]

Where else can you find a calorie count for "Caulking, chinking log cabin"....WTF? 246 calories an hour for me....now...if I could just find a log cabin in need of chinking.

I find the exercise section entertaining, but otherwise useless. I just use it to log my actual excercise.

[jtammy]

OMG, I had to open fitday to see if you were serious, and sure enough it's there! Also caulking, except log cabin! How hilarious!

I'm with the rest of you. I've set my activity level as sedentary and just log my intentional exercise so that I can track it.

[Mel]

I find the "calories burned" portion completely useless. Like Meg, I should have ceased to exist several years ago, but let me assure you, there is quite enough of me still here.

Calculations of RMR can vary widely for individuals of the same age and body mass. The amount of calories that two individuals burn doing the same activity also varies. If you really want to know exactly what YOUR numbers are, you need to be tested.

Since you know what works for you in terms of food and exercise, why log numbers that are psuedo-science?

Mel

[almostheaven]

Originally Posted by jtammy

OMG, I had to open fitday to see if you were serious, and sure enough it's there! Also caulking, except log cabin! How hilarious!

LOL I love Fitday for some of their stuff. Though I don't bother keeping up my Fitday calories anymore with the baby in tow. But it's the only site that enabled me to tell my sedentary dad how many calories he burned carrying the laundry upstairs.

[Abbeycat36]

Hahah this is funny

I agree, fitday's exercise thing is off a bit. It asks you what your lifestyle is and your weight.. but it does not know how much % of your weight is fat or muscle weight, which i think would have an effect on cal burned. But I think it's just to use as a guideline anyway.

I think maybe some of the basal # changes when you do exercise because it considers the metabolic rate for the day has changed, maybe? When you exercise, your burning rate will be elevated for an amount of time, I think they say 2 hours afterward. I'd guess that's the explanation for that.

I use the fit day journal for calculating calories, and just to log the fact that I've done exercise and how much. I don't find a lot of the calculations even for the food are accurate, so I so far have been inputting all of my items manually. The things I have nutritional breakdown for at least.