The 4,000 calories per week guideline page

[Ollie]

Seems like a great guideline to follow but whats the best way to track exercise calorie expenditure?

[Ollie]

bump

[sbhikes]

I think it's a stupid guideline. I think it's only meant as some sort of short-cut to avoiding "chronic cardio." Everybody labels any kind of cardio/endurance activity with the broad stroke of the "chronic cardio" brush around here. But if you do 10 thousand calories a week of slow movement it won't hurt you. Believe me, I've done it, and when I was doing it I felt like I was doing what humans are truly supposed to do. Of course, some of us like endurance activities more than others, so there's a personal thing going on there. But as long as your cardio is not done at a high level of exertion it's good and healthy.

Anyway, that's not really a very good answer to your question, but my tl;dr; answer is that it's just a short-cut to get people to stop killing themselves on the elliptical at the gym.

[yodiewan]

But if you do 10 thousand calories a week of slow movement it won't hurt you..

To be fair, he did say in the post:

Not all activity “counts” toward your caloric expenditure. Taking a 30-minute stroll to the store doesn’t count as focused work. Taking a 60-minute hike up in the hills does. Going for a nice relaxing ride on the bike around the neighborhood doesn’t count, but doing twenty miles in a single day does. Carrying the groceries from the car to the house doesn’t count; carrying the groceries from the store to the house just might, though. “You know it when you see it” applies here, so use your better judgment.

So that kinda gets him off the hook I think. He's not telling people to stop walking if they get over 40 miles on their pedometer on Saturday night.

If anything, I think the post should end some of the chronic cardio fear. In that example he gave, the guy went for a 6-mile run and a 13-mile bike ride on top of his more Primal-endorsed activities.

[jakey]

who's honestly going to track the calories they burn exercising? very hard to do, for one, and a huge waste of time. i wish mark hadn't put some arbitrary number on it. when he does this with numbers, like with respect to his carbohydrate curve, it gets a bit stupid.

[Owly]

I am already dreading the influx of exercise calorie counters and the arguments over what counts, how to count, and so on, and the primal purity police decrees over what is really PB exercise and what will kill us all.

[sbhikes]

It's even stupid to say you have to limit hiking up hills to no more than 4000 calories a week. Some of us do really well with tons of endurance exercise, including hiking in the hills. I'd say that it's plenty human and natural to walk a long distance in the mountains.

This is being discussed over on the Barefoot Ted huaraches group.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fro...es/LwB7Y7IKw1c

[NDF]

Seems like a great guideline to follow but whats the best way to track exercise calorie expenditure?

That's actually a pretty high calorie burn. That equates to 570 calories burnt through exercise a day. For me a 5'4" 130lb female, that's 50-100 minutes of exercise (depending on intensity). I don't know about anyone else, but I have a life outside of the gym and generally only aim for 30min 5 days a week.

Fat loss should come from diet anyway. Tracking exercise calories is pointless.

[bloodorchid]

I am already dreading the influx of exercise calorie counters and the arguments over what counts, how to count, and so on, and the primal purity police decrees over what is really PB exercise and what will kill us all.

on the flip side, if you create a paleo specific calorie burnt counter now you will rake in some dough

[sbhikes]

50-100 minutes of exercise isn't that much. It takes me 50 minutes to ride my bike one way to work. So that's 100 minutes right there. Then I will usually do something on my lunch hour, so there's another 60 minutes (or more since I don't punch a clock). I don't do this every day, but I could if I would get my butt out of bed early enough every day, which I don't. It doesn't feel like much and it doesn't even feel like it is taking a huge chunk of my day. I'll usually do a good 3-6 hour thing on the weekend, too.