I'm going to point out something right now that I think most apps don't do a good job of explaining to people. There is a lot of wishful thinking that goes on in the world out there and therefore, I think that people tend to stick with an app or service that tells them information that they would like to be true rather than what actually is true.
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not us, but it may as well have been
This walk that I did with my friend, to me, was not exercise. Yet I get this readout at the end of it. WTF?
The bit where our pace was over 17 minutes it is worth noting that we were not moving and I simply didn't pause the Garmin because I wanted the guy that I was with to have some sort of elation over the amount of calories that he burned and seeing as how he is nearly twice my size, he certainly burned more calories than I did on this walk.
In a light stroll like this, I never exited the warmup portion as far as my BPM is concerned. I would imagine that my friend who weighs 400 lbs that his heart was working harder than mine though, and that is kind of the point. I am helping my friend here, I am not in this to get exercise on my own but I guess every little bit counts.
Now here is something that I have a difficult time believing and that is the "active calorie" readout.
I didn't break a sweat, so me losing half a liter of sweat is not possible but it's a wrist watch, how could it possibly know? Me burning nearly 150 calories seems unlikely but then again, I have never really investigated how much your body burns with simply moving at all. I'm just not really buying that it burns that much but when I asked AI it said that a 6 km per hour pace (12 mins per km) that someone my size can burn up to 300 calories an hour.
To me that just seems crazy because this seems crazy and makes me question why I bother running at all if my objective is to lose and maintain weight. It seems like running might not be necessary at all.
I try to shy away from this kind of thinking though because I don't want to attempt to justify laziness. I think that most people should do as much activity as they are comfortable doing and dont hate. You don't hate walking do you? it's like the easiest thing.
So I don't necessarily believe this information but if it is true, and it appears as though it is because so many studies back it up, then this is great news for my obese friend if he keeps this up.