Fitness monitor does not have "horse mode."

[sophie]

Interesting thread.
I don’t have a step or heart rate tracker. I’m using one of those apps where you track calories because it helped me to lose weight in the past, and I need to lose 10 pounds.

I’ve always wondered how I should enter my rides. The app does have a “riding - trotting” exercise option…but it’s really so dependent on the horse, etc. For instance, riding my horse would burn little calories because she was so easy to ride. Today I rode a friend’s horse. It took a lot to keep him going forward while round and on the aids. I was sweating and had to take some breaks (I’m out of shape and couldn’t find a whip right away haha). I looked online for a calculator and based on my weight I burned 200 calories for that ride.
Does that sound right?

I do enter my walking as exercise: I walk on varied terrain (woods, hills) at 6 mph on average. When I go on my usual loop for 1 hour 30, I get home sweaty. So to me that’s exercise.

[blue_heron]

@sophie

I’m using one of those apps where you track calories because it helped me to lose weight in the past

Not to derail the thread, but: I’m struggling with one of these too. So many foods I eat are mixed foods, hard to count the calories unless I measure the ingredients separately. What about substitutions or when I make a low cal/low fat version of something? How are you managing?

[Pennywell_Bay]

Nothing great to add- but my friends and I used to do those “challenges” who gets the most steps etc. And when you log on every day it updates so you can see how you are doing compared to others.

So one guy used to log in early- then not update until the last minute of the challenge so really- you had no way of knowing how you were doing compared to others (which is the whole point, to motivate people to do “more”).

I got annoyed finally so put the fitbit on my dog then went outside with those air-tennis ball launchers.

Totally cheating… totally worth it.

[anon40672407]

@Mukluks

I may just end up getting a less expensive GPS type fitness monitor to wear when riding to track how far we ride, average pace, etc. The hard part will be remembering to switch monitors when I ride.

My phone has an ap that’s set up for riding. Equilab, I think is the name of it?

It tracks my path via gps (so arena word looks crazy, but trail riding creates a nice map of the area), tracks speed and supposed calories spent on the ride. I doubt it’s terribly accurate, and frankly I’ve never bothered to compare it to my Fitbit so I don’t know how they compare.

But having it HAS encouraged me to be sure to have my phone on me while trail riding.

[sophie]

Yes, it’s a pain, so once I’ve entered all the ‘mixed food’ meals I eat (salads, etc), I tend to reuse those instead of creating new ones. It’s so time consuming. Sometimes I look for something approaching in the database - if I’m making a Chicken Marbella, for instance, I can use one of the database entries for it. Even if it’s not fully accurate, I imagine it’s close enough.