Brad: Lay it on me! August 17, 2007
Posted by kimayars Uncategorized
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With respect to an earlier post, I would like to ask Brad/Zappoman to post his method for determining calories burned. I would really like to see what the average number of calories burned is for a typical dressage schooling session with Rasyn. Of course, I’m making a HUGE assumption that Brad will even read this… 
I’m preparing for my big launch on Monday. Yesterday I bought some more clothes to run in at Lululemon here in Whistler, and a jacket to warm up in. Believe it or not, I only have one pair of shorts, one pair of mid-weight running pants, and one pair of yoga capri pants (bought last year at Lululemon). I do have schooling tights (breeches) in practically every color, though.
I’m really looking forward to seeing Rasyn on Sunday. I’ve really missed him. Of course after having a week off he’s going to be EXTRA fun to ride. We’ll be doing a little lunging first to make sure that he’s safe and sane. But my guess is that we’ll be having a long session.
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Ok, so let’s figure out the best way to detail all this… I’m not sure if me posting a giant comment on your blog is the best way… because we might want to sit down and discuss it… so we can be clear.
But… Here’s the basic outline.
1) We need to estimate (as accurately as possible) your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is theoretically the calories your body requires to simply maintain it’s body composition if you were to simply sit in a chair all day doing nothing but breathing. This will require you getting an accurate weight.
2) We should probably take your weight a couple times a day for the next couple days to see what your typical morning and evening weight is. It doesn’t per se matter when you choose to do your weight measurements, but you’ll want to be as consistent as possible. Decide if you can more consistently weigh yourself in the morning or evening… and let’s get a measurement for the next couple days, and see if you are constant (within some margin of error). How good is your scale? Do you know that it’s accurate?
3) You need to track EVERYTHING you eat. No messing around. This part has to be accurate. If you don’t have a “food counts” book, you can borrow mine… or look for one online. You need to track calories, but as long as you’re at it, you might as well track other macro nutrient values like how much carbs, fat, and protein your taking in. This shouldn’t impact our study of your calories, but it’s good information for you to have so you can better understand your diet and how healthy it is.
4) You need to track every “extra” activity you do. This means any exercise… and any significant work effort that isn’t exercise. For example, if you play outside with the girls and run around and get out of breath, then that’s something you want to track. It would be best if you tracked the following: wear a Polar during the activity, and record what it said your average HR, max HR, and estimated calories burned were. You also want to record the activity you did as accurately as possible. We’ll look it up later in our MET tables and see what that calculates your calories to be.
5) Record everything you eat, and everything you do for the next week. Also, record your how much water you drink (we want to make sure you’re not dehydrating yourself). We’re going to assume you’ll be eating healthy enough with your new diet stating on monday… Please please try not to dehydrate yourself as that will just make the process take longer. Record your weight every day also. If you want to record other things… that’s great too… we may not use the info but it would hurt to have it.
What we are going to do is this… we are going to sum your “estimated” Basal Metabolic Rate, and your estimated calories burned through extra activity, and your estimated calories consumed. After a week, we are going to see what your change in weight is, vs. what the deficit is in these estimates. Notice I keep saying estimates, that’s because everything you’ve recorded is only an estimate, the whole point of this process is to gather enough of this estimated data so that we can begin to see “on average” how your body and your activity compares against the “estimates”…
Keep in mind, one week will not be enough time… we are going to need to keep this up over the period of several weeks (maybe months) before we can see if the data is converging. What we will hopefully discover is that… one of our methods for estimating calories burned will converge to some factor of what you actually appear to be burning.
So for example, we may discover that over a week Polar says you burned a 7000 calorie deficit, which should translate to 2 lbs loss in body weight… but you’ve only lost 1 lbs… If this trend continues, then it will show us that Polar is over estimating your calories by 200%. If we are so luck as to see that for your chosen fitness activities, Polar regularly and consistently over estimates calories by 200% then great news, it’s a good way to calculate your actual work effort (module the adjustment).
As Bernie pointed out, Polar only knows your HR (age, gender, weight, height, etc) but it can’t know how fast you are breathing and how hard your muscles are working isometrically. This is why we expect it to be incorrect by some factor… we need to determine the factor. Polars are used 90% of the time by cyclists and runners… and so their tables are based on the average running and cycling activity. They don’t apply to elite athletes and they don’t apply to dressage. But we should be able to determine a mapping function.
Are you ready? Start recording!
I would say that’s a giant comment! This all seems managagable. A pain in the butt, but manageable. I’ll be in touch via e-mail when I get back in town and we can go from there. I have a general equation for BMR: 8 * weight + 200
Is that a decent enough one?
This is the Harris-Benedict formula for BMR. It’s probably better than the one you listed.
For Women:
BMR = 655 + (4.35 x “typical” pounds) + (4.7 x inches) - (4.7 x age)
It accounts for gender differences, as well as age, and height.
The theory behind why heigh is included probably includes a reduction from height/weight ratio to a close approximate of body fat. Lean mass increases metabolism… so if you weigh the same but are taller, your are probably leaner, and therefore have a higher metabolism.
The mens formula is more sensitive to weight/height/age, and is probably only that way because they had more male test subjects when creating their formula.
Not related to the post, but I just wanted to say thanks for thinking of me as an athlete… it feels good to think others see me that way. Thanks!!!
I am going to try brad’s formula… looks interesting!
I have done Medgem testing with Momentum4Health. Emily Edison, the owner of the company is a well respected Registered Dietitian and Personal Trainer in the Seattle area. She used to teach Nutrition, and Fitness Programming at Ashmead College. This is where I met her. Emily works with athletes and weightloss clients.
http://momentum4health.com/met.testing.php
This is the formula that Emily gave her students. This comes from Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook. This is an easy to read sound book on nutrition. Nancy Clark also writes for Runner’s World.
1. Healthy body weight (lbs) x 10 calories = RMR(resting metabolic rate)
Example 125 x 10 = 1250 calories
2. Add in purposeful exercise (horseback riding, trot = 2.8 calories per hour per pound body weight) Pg. 262 Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook. http://www.amazon.com/Nancy-Clarks-Sports-Nutrition-Guidebook/dp/073604602X/ref=sr_1_1/104-6685309-1365527?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187473287&sr=8-1
Example 125 x 2.8 = 350 calories
3. Determine how many calories you need for you daily activity level APART from exercise.
If you are sedentary add 20-40% to RMR
If you are moderately active add 40-60% to RMR
If you are very active add 60-80% to RMR
Example a moderately active 125 woman…
40% x 1250 = 500 calories
4. Add the answers to steps 1, 2, and 3 to determine today’s total calories requirement.
Example 1250 RMR + 350 calories purposeful exercise + 500 daily activity calories = 2100 calories.
I had several clients do Medgem testing with Emily. The results were fairly close to the RMR prediction from Nancy Clark. I’m curious to see what happens with your experiment.
[...] Speaking of which, no work with Ray today. Instead I let him recover from the fly spray incident (actually the girls and I went to a birthday party today at a local zoo). Tomorrow he won’t get off so easy. We’re going to continue our work at the mounting block, and then transfer that to under saddle. We may not get beyond a walk, but the emphasis will be on softness, suppleness, and relaxation. I think this horse needs yoga more than I do. :-) And I will have the Polar tomorrow so I can start comparing calories burned with the Garmin. After Ray and I get back to our “normal” riding schedule, I’m going to implement the plan outlined by Brad and see what my calorie count is when I do ride. Jeff will be reminded once again that I never forget a challenge… [...]