calories and climbing

[layton]

anyone have an idea of how to figure out how many calories one spends climbing and approaching? Is there something that would give you so many cal/mile and so many cal/feet. What about the climbing? Or is there an equation for just so many cal/exertion*time. That would seem a better way!

Just curious! I've always wondered how many cal. I've burned on long days of climbing and approaching.

[Dru]

weigh yourself before and after, and figure out how much weight you lost. now calories are energy so e=mc^2, multiply the mass you lost by the speed of light squared to find out the energy in calories and remember one nutritional Calorie is actually a kilocalorie or 1000 scientific calories.

[ivan]

mike, yer a fat bi-yatch and all the climbing in the world won't make up for your destructive-attachment to hohos and krispy kreme!

[Gary_Yngve]

I've wondered about this too. Comparing weights won't work because most of the weight loss is loss of water. Assuming we were 100% efficient, it would require 80kg * 10 m/s^2 * 2500 m = 2*10^6 J for an 80kg person to ascend 2500 meters.* Convert the joules to kilocals, and it's under 500 Calories.

 

The way biomechanists measure calories burned is by measuring CO2 emissions from respiration, which isn't practical to do with climbers.

 

btw - check out the latest Natl Geo... article on why Americans are so fat, and an article about a sick icecap traverse in southern Patagonia. Rowing, climbing, rappelling with sleds down icecliffs... took them around 50 days.

 

* Assume a spherical cow.

[Dru]

once you hydrate you will still have lost weight

 

a confounding factor is that the body burns at a higher metabolic rate when at higher elevations!

 

edit i can't believe someone actually took my e=mc^2 suggestion seriously!

[Gary_Yngve]

Dru, I wasn't following your e=mc^2 suggestion. My math was calculating the potential energy of an 80kg mass at a height of 2500 meters. If you could measure weight lost that was independent of hydration, you could potentially do some calculation with the calories per gram of glycogen or something.

 

Dangit, I have a picture somewhere of a kangaroo on a treadmill wearing a gasmask so that researchers can measure its CO2 output... but I can't find it.

[ashw_justin]

There's got to be a weight-efficient way of measuring CO2 exhalation, you'd just need a small sampling device and the proper calibration. Or maybe something electrochemical could measure rate of metabolism.

[Ducknut]

I doubt you'd have to actually measure metabolic rate of climbers. They have enough empirical data on rates of exertion that that there is bound to be a formula. Just plug in the hours of exercise and out comes an estimate of calories burned.

 

On energy demand, a memorable quote from biochem in grad school was "the energy needed for a full day of intense studying can be supplied by one half of a salted peanut".

 

Just imagine what you can do with a fist full of peanuts and a couple of beers.

[JoshK]

OK, I read somewhere that it takes 6000 calories to build a pound of tissue. Anybody know if this is true? I find if I take in about 3000 calories a day I still lose weight over a few days. The other thing I have noticed is I start to eat less as they days pass on a climb...

[Fairweather]

All I know is that one hour on the "stair-mill" machine at the gym, set for "steady pace" on speed #13 (of 20), keeps my heart rate at between 150 and 160 bpm. At the end of my workout the "calories burned" reads between 800 and 900. (I weigh about 165lbs) I'm sure this is a very generalized formula that has been programmed into the unit, but I've always thought that this sounds about right, and figure between 800 to 1000 calories per hour on a 1200 vert ft/hr glacier climb at moderate altitude is comparable.

[ashw_justin]

I doubt you'd have to actually measure metabolic rate of climbers. They have enough empirical data on rates of exertion that that there is bound to be a formula. Just plug in the hours of exercise and out comes an estimate of calories burned.

 

Yeah but why mess around with approximate correlative statistics when you can measure directly? Otherwise you are just making lots of assumptions. Anyway that's just my bias.

[Dru]

I'm certain there is a link between BMI and calories. Can someone please elaborate?

[markharf]

Try this:

 

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calories.htm

[CraigA]

I'm not positive where I read it but I remember reading that high altitude climbers (I believe they were talking about 15,000 feet and above) can burn as much as 6,000 calories per day. The article was about meal planning for climbs and expeditions.

 

Craig

[fenderfour]

I remember hearing that a pound of fat is 3500 calories. I don't remember where I heard that, though.

[Alpine_Tom]

On energy demand, a memorable quote from biochem in grad school was "the energy needed for a full day of intense studying can be supplied by one half of a salted peanut".

 

Just imagine what you can do with a fist full of peanuts and a couple of beers.

I expect that's inaccurate. In the DK "Guide to the Human Body" it says about the brain: "...although it makes up just 2 percent of the body's weight, it uses 20 percent of its energy." (My kid prefers this sort of thing to storybooks.)

 

According to http://www.fitresource.com/Fitness/CalBurn.htm, a 200 lb person (like me) burns 576 cal/hr hiking cross-country.

 

But in real life, it would depend on all sorts of variables like speed, weight of pack, weather conditions, steepness, and so on. Those tables are about as accurate at that BMI number.

 

That 576 cal/hr number occurs frequently on the table for a wide variety of activities, suggesting that it is some sort of formula they're just plugging the numbers in for, rather than an actual empirical finding.

[Bug]

There are so many variables that you will have trouble getting anything "exact" for your circumstances. I have read in many journals ect. that 6000 calories is a standard burn for a full day in the mountains. That seems accurate when compared to the stairstepper monitor that puts the burn at about 950/hr for me. Variables to include would be temp, elevation, oxygen consumption (it takes oxygen to burn calories.), Weight moved, amount and type of calories consumed. On top of that, figure in the recovery and build time after the exercise, again coupled with oxygen comsumption, type and quantity of calorie intake, fat burning/muscle building. You would need Catbird to figure this one out.

[Ducknut]

http://www.fitresource.com/Fitness/CalBurn.htm[/url], a 200 lb person (like me) burns 576 cal/hr hiking cross-country.

 

 

Your own source says that a 200 lbs person would burn 108 calories/hour reading a book. Raw peanuts contain 5.6 calories/gram so you need 19.3 gms of peanuts to fuel your studying for 60 minutes. Thats about .68 ounces of peanuts for non-metric folks. Beats me on how many peanuts make up an ounce but its not very many!

 

The caloric equivalents are multiples of basal metabolic rate above resting MR.

 

Mountaineering is reported to burn 1547 cal/hr.

[Macson]

I sometimes use a heart rate monitor that claims to measure calories based on your sex, weight and heart rate. I've never worn it on a climb, but I did wear it once while mountain biking (mostly pushing) to the top of the rainier express at Crystal Mountain and down again. The calories worked out to just over 1,000 per hour on average. I weigh 175 lbs.

[Dru]

Please relate zero point energy to calorie consumption of a cylindrical cow.

[J_Fisher]

Try this: calories per hour

 

It gets a lot more activity and intensity specific than those other sources, for example, various types of climbing.

[snugtop]

this is lame...who cares how many calories it burns if it's fun...kinda like those Cosmo articles about out how many calories having sex burns...

[Dru]

i hear you can get low-carb high-protein chocolate body paint now

[Bug]

this is lame...who cares how many calories it burns if it's fun...kinda like those Cosmo articles about out how many calories having sex burns...

 

BE SILENT oh yee of tender years and little fat.

[Gary_Yngve]

this is lame...who cares how many calories it burns if it's fun...kinda like those Cosmo articles about out how many calories having sex burns...

 

BE SILENT oh yee of tender years and little fat.

 

I've had the calorie conversation with many of my climbing partners, and I think they were all in the context of, "I'm morbidly curious how many calories I burned, because I don't think there's any way I can eat enough in a day to replace them."