No Faith in the Moral Standards of the Players as a Group

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

The machine is not measuring how many calories you are expending. It is measuring, e.g., how many watts you produce, or what your MPH is. If I can hold 24 MPH on a spin bike for an 30 minutes without a major expenditure of effort, I am burning fewer calories than a person who needs to work really hard to hold that speed. Heavier people people burn more calories than lighter people do maintaining the same output (watts, MPH, however you are measuring it). Males and females burn calories differently. People who are the same weight but have different fat content and muscle masses burn calories differently. The treadmill has no idea how many calories it is taking you run X miles at Y MPH. It just knows that you did it and gives you a calorie burn based on something like what a typical 150 lb man would burn.

I feel like maybe I am missing something, and it may be because I never took physics, but let me try again.

The machine can measure how many watts you produce. Wikipedia tells me a watt is a unit of power, a measure of energy transferred per unit time. So if the machine can measure watts and time, you can derive energy. Calories are a measure of energy. So the machine should be able to measure calories of work performed. It is true that bodies will differ in terms of how efficiently they can mobilize the body's resources to convert them to do work. It is also true that it takes more energy to move a bigger body, but if you can input weight and it can calculate watts, doesn't that address that issue?

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I feel like maybe I am missing something, and it may be because I never took physics, but let me try again.

The machine can measure how many watts you produce. Wikipedia tells me a watt is a unit of power, a measure of energy transferred per unit time. So if the machine can measure watts and time, you can derive energy. Calories are a measure of energy. So the machine should be able to measure calories of work performed. It is true that bodies will differ in terms of how efficiently they can mobilize the body's resources to convert them to do work. It is also true that it takes more energy to move a bigger body, but if you can input weight and it can calculate watts, doesn't that address that issue?

The simplest way to put is is, if my body can more efficiently produce an average of X watts for an hour than somebody else's body, then I will burn fewer calories in that hour even if the machine measures us as having produced the same watts.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

The simplest way to put is is, if my body can more efficiently produce an average of X watts for an hour than somebody else's body, then I will burn fewer calories in that hour even if the machine measures us as having produced the same watts.

Yes, that makes sense. But the machine should be able to accurately measure how much work you did, which is the minimum your body burned. If you could trust machines to get that right (which I'm not sure you can), then that number would be useful as a comparison for a single person across different workouts.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Yes, that makes sense. But the machine should be able to accurately measure how much work you did, which is the minimum your body burned. If you could trust machines to get that right (which I'm not sure you can), then that number would be useful as a comparison for a single person across different workouts.

Assuming you use the same machine, or another machine that uses the same algorithm, one can certainly compare one workout to the next. The problem is people think "I burned 343 calories. That takes away the burger i just ate." The calorie number is actually a bit contrived.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Assuming you use the same machine, or another machine that uses the same algorithm, one can certainly compare one workout to the next. The problem is people think "I burned 343 calories. That takes away the burger i just ate." The calorie number is actually a bit contrived.

Am I on ignore? Question I was asking was not calories burned, but calories of work performed.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Am I on ignore? Question I was asking was not calories burned, but calories of work performed.

You mean by the mechanical machine, or the human one? The mechanical machine only knows itself.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Yes, that makes sense. But the machine should be able to accurately measure how much work you did, which is the minimum your body burned. If you could trust machines to get that right (which I'm not sure you can), then that number would be useful as a comparison for a single person across different workouts.

I think the machines these days can fairly accurate how many watts you have produced. And you can definitely use watt meters to effectively assess your workouts against each other. But the part where the machine should be able to accurately measure how much work you did is where we are talking about different things, I think. Different people need to work different amounts to produce a watt. For example, look at this estimate of how many calories you burn sustaining certain watt levels depending on your weight.

http://www.fitnessforweightloss.com/...ationary-bike/

Significant differences in calories burned while sustaining the same watts depending just on how much you weigh. And even these numbers are just a loose approximation, because a 200 lb person with 35% body fat is going to burn a different amount of calories than a 200 lb person with 6% body fat.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

And even these numbers are just a loose approximation, because a 200 lb person with 35% body fat is going to burn a different amount of calories than a 200 lb person with 6% body fat.

Why is that?

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Why is that?

A muscular body burns more calories than a fatty body, and tends to burn more calories at rest than a non-muscular body. But if you are muscular, you are more likely to be in good cardio shape, and your body may be more efficient and need fewer calories to, for example, maintain X MPH on a treadmill or bike.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Yes, that makes sense. But the machine should be able to accurately measure how much work you did, which is the minimum your body burned. If you could trust machines to get that right (which I'm not sure you can), then that number would be useful as a comparison for a single person across different workouts.

FWIW, I'm a numbers/tracking junkie. I have something like four or five different ways of tracking what I'm doing in terms of workouts. The most consistent is my heart rate monitor, and it's always lower than the machines (which I also track), but I think of it more as a ballpark than an exact number of calories burned.

I use it more for comparison purposes to other workouts than I do for comparisons with what I'm eating. I think of food calories and exercise calories as two different things. The more weight I lose, the harder it is to get the calorie expenditure up. I have to either work harder or go longer.

My particular heart rate monitor also has a VO2 max function, which I take with a massive grain of salt because it's not actually measuring oxygen expenditure but making some (probably decentish) conclusions based on my resting heart rate, heart rate variability, age, height, weight, sex, etc. I've read that it's within about 7% of accuracy, and since I'm never going to be an elite athlete, the exact amount isn't important. But I check it every month or so, again, for comparison purposes and to make sure I'm on track of increasing or maintaining my fitness level.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I feel like maybe I am missing something, and it may be because I never took physics, but let me try again.

The machine can measure how many watts you produce. Wikipedia tells me a watt is a unit of power, a measure of energy transferred per unit time. So if the machine can measure watts and time, you can derive energy. Calories are a measure of energy. So the machine should be able to measure calories of work performed. It is true that bodies will differ in terms of how efficiently they can mobilize the body's resources to convert them to do work. It is also true that it takes more energy to move a bigger body, but if you can input weight and it can calculate watts, doesn't that address that issue?

First, no one puts their height, weight, age, and sex into those machines. If they did, yes, the read would be more accurate.

Second, I don't know how you can write the last two sentences next to each other. The better athlete you become, the fewer calories you will burn (workouts being equal). I have been doing a lot of HIIT workouts. If you and I did the same exact workout, I would burn far fewer calories than you. If I did the same distance run as Coltrane, he would burn far fewer calories than I.

If it were a simple matter of if you go X fast for X amount of time you will burn X amount of calories if you weigh X amount and are X tall etc., athletes would not plateau. As the body gets more efficient it needs fewer calories to do the same amount of work. This is why athletes will throw sprints in on a distance run to force their bodies to work harder (even while reducing the total number of miles run).

TM

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

First, no one puts their height, weight, age, and sex into those machines. If they did, yes, the read would be more accurate.

For some machines (a treadmill, e.g.), I get why you need weight, but I don't get why you need the other characteristics.

Second, I don't know how you can write the last two sentences next to each other. The better athlete you become, the fewer calories you will burn (workouts being equal). I have been doing a lot of HIIT workouts. If you and I did the same exact workout, I would burn far fewer calories than you. If I did the same distance run as Coltrane, he would burn far fewer calories than I.

Honest question: Is this true? Do individuals get more efficiently at converting stored calories to work produced?

If it were a simple matter of if you go X fast for X amount of time you will burn X amount of calories if you weigh X amount and are X tall etc., athletes would not plateau. As the body gets more efficient it needs fewer calories to do the same amount of work. This is why athletes will throw sprints in on a distance run to force their bodies to work harder (even while reducing the total number of miles run).

For some aspects of biomechanics, I get that improving one's form will make you more efficient, particularly for sports where the form is much more complicated. But for a stair master or a exercise cycle, is there really much to that? And is it just biomechanics, or does the body actually do better at the biochemistry?

Not arguing -- just something I would like to understand better. Also, was trying to make a distinction before between the work performed (your output, measured in energy) and the calories burned (how much stored energy your body needs to do the former) -- seems like the former should be easy to measure, the latter not so much. Maybe I didn't make that distinction clear.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

For some machines (a treadmill, e.g.), I get why you need weight, but I don't get why you need the other characteristics.

Because it take someone who is 5' 6" and a fat 200 pounds considerably more effort and work to run one mile than someone who is 6' 2" and an athletic 200 pounds to run that mile. Men and women burn calories differently. Young people burn calories much better than old people.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Honest question: Is this true? Do individuals get more efficiently at converting stored calories to work produced?

Yes.

https://www.outsideonline.com/178665...lories-newbies

https://www.mensjournal.com/health-f...ries-20160209/

The way I think about it is, if your body didn't get more efficient (or, at some point just shut down your ability to burn fat stores for safety purposes), we could all do one week's worth of work on an exact diet, measure the percentage of fat lost and how many calories were taken in, and then figure out exactly when we could reach a specified goal. Obviously that doesn't work. People plateau and at a certain point, stop losing fat stores altogether. You have to work much much harder to lose the same amount of fat the closer you get to 0% body fat.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

For some aspects of biomechanics, I get that improving one's form will make you more efficient, particularly for sports where the form is much more complicated. But for a stair master or a exercise cycle, is there really much to that? And is it just biomechanics, or does the body actually do better at the biochemistry?

Here's an article that looks at the opposite way--reducing muscle efficiency increased calories burned.

https://now.uiowa.edu/2015/02/reduci...burning-muscle

TM

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I feel like maybe I am missing something, and it may be because I never took physics, but let me try again.

The machine can measure how many watts you produce. Wikipedia tells me a watt is a unit of power, a measure of energy transferred per unit time. So if the machine can measure watts and time, you can derive energy. Calories are a measure of energy. So the machine should be able to measure calories of work performed. It is true that bodies will differ in terms of how efficiently they can mobilize the body's resources to convert them to do work. It is also true that it takes more energy to move a bigger body, but if you can input weight and it can calculate watts, doesn't that address that issue?

I'm on ignore?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I'm on ignore?

Never. I actually like to read your posts aloud in different voices, to the amusement of my co-workers, in the hopes that doing so will shed more light on what you mean, but it doesn't always help. As I say, I amuse my co-workers, so that's a plus.