You can not believe it, but yesterday I went kayaking and I saw my smart watch after one hour and 10 minutes that I burnt 400 calories. I go to gym and do fitness 3 days a week, but I always burn 300 calories after an hour! I really recommend kayaking for whom want to burn more calorie. Do you have such an experience like me? How much do you usually burn in an hour of kayaking?
4,000 calorie days are common. Long days can be 5,000 calories or more.
On canoe trips on big rivers we often manage 25-30 miles a day, sometimes 35 miles a day or more.
I prefer to measure how much faster my average is compared to the last trip. The typical problem is how our body can accurately assess how much beer, cheese and crackers we deplete during a workout. Then it tells us to increase the amount we consume by between 5 and 10% to compensate in case we encounter a possible famine.
I find I track about 425 or thereabouts every 45 minutes. So I’d say ballpark your spot on.
I cross check my calorie counts from the smartwatch to workouts on elliptical and rowing machines and stationary bikes that also track calorie count on them and compare it to what the smart watch thinks i did since the machines actually know what you a outputting on them. I find my counter is roughly +/- about 23 Calories per 30 minutes off from what the machines think you did. So I’d say your in the ballpark measurement wise. (you may even be low a bit.)
Looking back at some of my Georgian Bay menus I was probably averaging 3100 calories at 20 miles a day. So someone explain to me please about freeze dried dinners. Mountain House Chili Mac, for example, is 460 calories total. Serves two. WTF?
I don’t see how a device can calculate calories when paddling. It doesn’t know the current, wind speed and direction, or the efficiency of the hull. The only thing it know is pulse, but that’s effected by a lot of things other than effort. There could be nudists on the banks.
Sometimes it’s easier to just do it. I found that when I eat less, my weight goes down. I waa around 206 to 210 for 10 years while I was actively bikingband himing. Then I stopped to do thing that intrude on life. I went up to 232 lbs. The doctor keft the room and I read his notes - “morbidly obese.” That hurt. Then I went up to 255 lbs. And peaked at 263 lbs. I dropped 10 lbs then another 10 lbs. The thought occured to me that if I lost another 20 lbs, I’d just be morbidly obese. So I dropped to 225 lbs by eating less. I don’t know how many calories it takes to stay there, but I know if it looks good to eat, it should be avoided.
@punkinhead I don’t know about all smart watchesbut mine does slightly more than that.
It calculates basal metabolic consumption, resting calories, (it does take time for it to adjust usually about a week to figure that out.) from there it has sport modes, that track specific exercises of which kayaking is one, so it knows about your cadence speed in paddling.
Further it’s also tracking how fast you are moving via GPS.
Finally it’s measuring my blood O2 and this combined with heart rate and speeds and stroke rate gives it a fair idea of my output and fatigue rates.
no just because I don’t believe the marketing materials, I’ve benchamrked it against spin bikes, which basically generate electric power based on resistance you increasing the power load, and these bikes then it’s simple math to convert from watts to calories. The watch doesn’t know i’ve increased the bike’s resistance. yet at the end of the day the bikes calorie count is within around 20 calories per 30 minutes of use.
The Cross country elliptical does the same thing, and again I find that i’m also within 20 calories per 30 minutes as calculated by the watch and directly measured by the machine. and yet the watch knows nothing about the resistance I set on the machine.
Same goes for the Sculling trainer. Also for the kayaking trainer I had the fortune to use on two occasions.
so pretty much somehow it’s figuring things out based on O2, heart rate, and repetition cadence.
So in real life, it doesn’t really need to know current and wind, thats either resistance, or assistance, and as we’ve proven by direct machine measurement, it doesn’t need to really know that to calculate the amount of work being done.
Long and the short is it’s close enough that I’d say it’s reliable.
Actual measurement of calories burned is generally done with an Omnical using expired gas analysis indirect calorimetry; it measures how much CO2 an athlete breaths out. Everything else is just an estimate. Estimating from heart rate alone is going to be pretty crude.
I like this website for its guidance on relative burn rate for physical activities. It has a very, very extensive list, and for the activities I’ve done, I’d say the comparative MET values are accurate. I haven’t searched long enough to find a conversion from MET to actual calories, but I’m sure there’s one out there.
I heard a guy talk at canoecopia about not packing enough food, in the pics they were looking pretty gaunt. Not quite civil war prison skinny but not healthy.
I could stand to lose some pounds and find food to be a good motivation. I enjoy a good day of paddling and a good meal at the end of it. I’ve never been confused with an athlete. Some days I push it but mostly I don’t. If you need calories hot chocolate and nuts do the trick.
