How to Track Calorie Burn from Resistance Training

[Miyth]

Hello Fitbit community!

I have been using the fitbit one for 4 months now and it has been awesome! I pay close attention to my calorie burn now and use it to gauge my calorie in take for each day.

I recently joined a gym and I have been enjoying a lot of cardio (mainly elliptical and treadmill), but I would like to add in some resistance/strength training. Since I depend on the calorie burn estimate on my fitbit app, I really want to make sure I'm tracking my calorie burned while performing resistance training. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be an option under the activities section. On the cardio machines I'm able to track my heart rate, but I'm not sure how I can best track my calorie burn while performing resistance training.

Any tips? I wouldn't be opposed to buying a heart monitor, but I wouldn't even know what to do with it...

Thanks for reading!

[Southernkiss47]

I am not sure if this will help but if you log in resistance training, record your time started, duration and the intensity it will give you a estimated carlories burned. It is based on your current weight registered. it is not acturate but it will give you something to track.

[Colinm39]

---

@Miyth wrote:

Hello Fitbit community!

I have been using the fitbit one for 4 months now and it has been awesome! I pay close attention to my calorie burn now and use it to gauge my calorie in take for each day.

I recently joined a gym and I have been enjoying a lot of cardio (mainly elliptical and treadmill), but I would like to add in some resistance/strength training. Since I depend on the calorie burn estimate on my fitbit app, I really want to make sure I'm tracking my calorie burned while performing resistance training. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be an option under the activities section. On the cardio machines I'm able to track my heart rate, but I'm not sure how I can best track my calorie burn while performing resistance training.

Any tips? I wouldn't be opposed to buying a heart monitor, but I wouldn't even know what to do with it...

Thanks for reading!

---

@MiythHere is a Heart Rate Calculator giving you calories and it is within a few calories of my HRM at around 70-75% of my maxHR. But you will notice it will not calculate below a HR of 100. That seems to coincide with various reports on the Internet where HRM's are excellent for that in between effort.  Here is an extract from Livestrong

"The monitors appear to be the most accurate when measuring moderate-intensity exercise. Low-intensity and high-intensity exercise have produced less accurate measurements"

This is probably because the resting HR for the population is between 50-100 bpm, mine is 52-55. I had a very hot day recently just sitting around and my HR was 96 doing nothing and the HRM assumed I was active.. Be aware of these anomalies.

What type of equipment do you use for your resistance training ?

[slysam]

If you don't mind a little logging chore, I think Spark People does well with estimating calorie burn from strength training. You log the exercise, sets, reps, weight and time spent doing the exercise (they have a phone app which is now free--use to be $3.99). Why I like it--it is nice having the record of progress on sets/reps/weight and I feel the calorie burn makes sense. Okay not scientific! A program I was doing involved a mix of vigorous compound exercises like squats and deadlifts and some lighter exercises like planks, leg lifts, etc. In between exercises, I do dynamic stretching or mobility exercises (after I log the previous exercise) because I don't like just resting. I logged my rest minutes as "general stretching" and my work minutes as the exercise I did. The result.. My calorie burn was higher than what Fitbit would suggest for "strength training, light to moderate effort", but lower than "strength training, vigorous effort". That seemed fair since it was a mix of intensities. It isn't perfect as they don't have every exercise and strength burn is more variable, but I think for those it has it must be using MET values for that exercise. For non-listed exercises I just enter a calorie burn for similar exercises--I've logged several workouts so have seen the calorie burn estimate it gives for my stats enough to guess on an unlisted exercise. I use to use my heart rate monitor, but they are not really that accurate for strength training. I was surprised that my Spark and HRM calorie burn estimate for one of my workouts tends to be within 20 calories of each other, but I am not really doing traditional sets with long rests.