Best way to measure activities

[C0nt1nu1ty]

This is more of a question about prefrences but how do people measure non walking activities (such as in my case weight training?) 

I know that MyFitnessPal does have a section for strength training but I'm trying something a bit different and I'm not sure how accurate it is:

I take perscription stimulants for Narcolepsy and have been told to watch my heart rate when exercising (its fine btw, my neurologist is just super jumpy) and thought I'd employ the tracking function to find my activity calorie output. Thing is I know the tracker is calibrated for running so I'm not sure how accurate it is. 

I *think* its ok as its basing the readings on my heart actvitiy but I have no idea if thats more or less accurate than taking a preset reading from a website. 

Anyone else doing it this way or got any other ideas on how to get stationary exercise into fitbit?

[LewWagner]

I wear my Fitbit Zip on my shorts clipped to my left shorts pocket.  I do several 30 minute recumbent bike sessions each day (yesterday about 2 hours and 10 minutes) and burned over 4,000 calories. 

It appears that the Zip is picking up or treating my hip movement as forward motion.  While I do over 30 miles on the bike, my mileage and step count on Fitbit dashboard is registered as less.

I also manually log my bike exercise each time just to make sure.  I input calories as I get them automatically calcualted from my Under Armour Map My Fitness account.

I'm meeting my step, distance, VAM, mile, and calorie goals for each day, so it's working for me.

[LewWagner]

Also,  I find that I burn more calories "biking" in less time than I do walking.  For instance, I burned over 4K calories in a little over 2 hours, yesterday.

I burned 4,301 calories walking/hiking back one day in late November but that was over 6 1/2 hours.

[TCG]

If you work with a trainer, ask them how many calories you burn doing a certain exercise. My trainer tells me that I usually burn 211 calories doing the cardio workout with weights for 30 minutes, then I do the elliptical for 25 minutes. If you have an Iphone and are using My Fitness Pal you can syn in your workouts. It will also help you keep track of what your are eating. Congratulations on your healthy journey

[Heybales]

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@C0nt1nu1ty wrote:

This is more of a question about prefrences but how do people measure non walking activities (such as in my case weight training?) 

I know that MyFitnessPal does have a section for strength training but I'm trying something a bit different and I'm not sure how accurate it is:

I take perscription stimulants for Narcolepsy and have been told to watch my heart rate when exercising (its fine btw, my neurologist is just super jumpy) and thought I'd employ the tracking function to find my activity calorie output. Thing is I know the tracker is calibrated for running so I'm not sure how accurate it is. 

I *think* its ok as its basing the readings on my heart actvitiy but I have no idea if thats more or less accurate than taking a preset reading from a website. 

Anyone else doing it this way or got any other ideas on how to get stationary exercise into fitbit?

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The Fitbit seeing a few steps during strength training and assigning a calorie count based on it is grossly under-estimated.

Log it in MFP as Strength Training in cardio section, it may seem low compared to cardio, but that is true.

On Fitbit, log as Weight training, power lifting if it was heavy for you and rests were 1-3 min only between sets, or if easly lifting just maintenance level, then easy level.

And no, heart activity for calorie burn estimates are based on formula's ONLY valid for aerobic exercise that is steady state same HR for 2-4 min. It's based on providing oxygen.

If you are somehow making weight training fit that bill - then you are doing it all wrong, as it should be anaerobic during lifts, and totally opposite of steady-state HR.

What Fitbit you using that is basing it on HR?

[slysam]

COnt1nity, I think it is fine to wear your HRM during strength work for the heart rate reading aspect. I use to do the same and I also did for yoga. But as others said, the calorie burn estimate your HRM uses is going to be based on certain assumptions and one fo those assumptions is you are doing aerobic exercise (which weight lifting generally is not). Saying that, it may not be a big deal for you as an individual. I use to log my heart rate monitor calorie burn for all intentional exercise (other than walking) because I used an HRM app that automatically logged to Fitbit for me (Digifit Icardio). In my case, my HRM estimate was usually less than the exercise database would give for the activity. I had no bad effects on my weight loss doing this, but my heart rate does recover fairly quick. I hope my HRM was underestimating, but I appreciated the extra 100 and something calories it gave me to eat. If I logged based on MET values (what the database does), then I would have had more added on. I then switched to using Spark people's fitness tracker to estimate my strength training calorie burn. It is a bit of work, but you enter the exercise, sets, reps, weight and time spent doing the exercise and it estimates a calorie burn (I think based on MET values for that exercise). I don't really rest between sets, I tend to do light cardio, dynamic stretches or mobility exercises so I logged my rest time as hatha yoga (not accurate, but close enough). The result was very interesting... My calorie burn came out higher than weight lifting, light effort but less than weight lifting, vigorous effort (compared to Fitbit database). I think it was a fair compromise as my workout was a mix of vigorous and light to moderate effort exercises. The calorie burn every time I compared was within 20 calories of my Digifit calorie burn for the workout. I don't know whether my experience is typical, my understanding is the HRMs typically overestimate strength training calorie burn. I guess I would suggest comparing your HRM estimates to what the Fitbit database would have credited for the activity. I find that MFP is more generous on calorie burn than Fitbit's activity database so am inclined to trust it a little less. I could reverse "engineer" the fitbit calorie burn (using my BMR stats and MET charts) but could not figure out how MFP works out it's activity calorie burn numbers.