MET's - Full Compendium and a calculator

[Colinm39]

Here is a full compendium of MET's activities in pdf format. With that, and the Calculator you can perform comparative calculations to get the "feel" of the number of MET's for an activity.  This will help you understand the concept of MET and the effort required.

I will use snow shovelling as an example "Shovelling Snow - Moderate effort" has a MET value of 5.3

 Using the calculator, I would have to walk on a non-gradient with Gross energy at 4.2mph to generate 5.3 MET's. The MET's is constant because that is the effort, but the longer I walk, I get more calories.That speed of walk I would also generate close to 100% VAM if I kept the speed constant
 

Link to the MET's PDF Compendium  http://tinyurl.com/kpexgop

Link to the Calculator  http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

[Colinm39]

Here is a full compendium of MET's activities in pdf format. With that, and the Calculator you can perform comparative calculations to get the "feel" of the number of MET's for an activity.  This will help you understand the concept of MET and the effort required.

[Colinm39]

I will use snow shovelling as an example "Shovelling Snow - Moderate effort" has a MET value of 5.3

[Colinm39]

 Using the calculator, I would have to walk on a non-gradient with Gross energy at 4.2mph to generate 5.3 MET's. The MET's is constant because that is the effort, but the longer I walk, I get more calories.That speed of walk I would also generate close to 100% VAM if I kept the speed constant
 

Link to the MET's PDF Compendium  http://tinyurl.com/kpexgop

Link to the Calculator  http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

[Mary]

Thanks, Colin.  I like those! 

I wonder if this link would help some people understand the concept, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent

Based on that it sounds like the MET value is a multiplier and your calorie estimate is your MET value X your BMR for the period.  I assume Fitbit uses your per minute BMR.  To get that you can look at a period of inactivity on your graph and hover over a bar.  Mine gives me 14 calories for each 15 minute segment.  So my BMR is 14/15= .93 calories/minute.  So walking at 3.5mph which has a MET value around 3.7 should give me around (3.7 X .93) calories per minute, or 3.4 calories per minute.  I actually get around 5, so maybe it thinks I'm moving faster.  Though if I manually log a 3 mile walk over 1 hour it gives me 3.6 calories per minute from the database, which is much closer to 3.4.  So the Fitbit seems a bit generous.  Anyone else find that?   

[WendyB]

Thanks Colin!

[Colinm39]

@MaryI did a similar manual activity but for walking at 4mph and 4.5mph and the Compendium goes from 5 MET to 7 MET on that difference.

The calories calculated on the 4mph are 166 and the BMR MET calculation is 165, spot on, but as soon as I go to 4.5mph I get 209 calories,100% VAM, but the BMR MET calculation is 231 calories.

There are variables now with more testing and we can see how complex it must be for Fitbit to encapsulate the variations. This link is to the 2011 Compendium and a section on corrected MET's which shows the variations that can be expected in gender and weight.

2011 Corrected MET's