Exercise Calorie Calculator

NISAKE GAME

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About this app

[PLEASE READ FIRST]
This app does not say whether you will lose weight, and it holds no food
calorie data. It turns the numbers you type into calories and minutes,
and nothing else. The figures are estimates from a MET table, and the same
activity varies from one person to the next.

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∑ Exercise Calorie Calculator — the usual figure includes what you burn sitting still

A 60 kg person walking for an hour burns 189 kcal.
Sixty-three of those would have gone anyway.
The walk itself added 126.

English has two words for this: gross and net. Japanese has only one, and
it means the gross figure — the one that quietly includes the resting part.
This app never asks you to choose. It shows both at once.

■ Why there are two

Calories = 1.05 x MET x hours x kilograms

A MET is a multiple of sitting quietly, which is 1.0. So an activity at
MET 3.0 is three times rest, and the 1.0 of rest is inside that 3.0.
One third of those 189 kcal was never the walking.

■ MET 1.0 is rest, not nothing

A 60 kg person sitting still for an hour still burns 63 kcal.
Sleeping is 0.9 — below sitting — and comes to 57 kcal.
Pick sleeping and the net figure goes negative, because sleeping really is
less than sitting. The app says so rather than rounding it up to zero.

■ Three topics

▪ Activity to calories: weight, time and activity give gross and net
▪ Calories to time: weight, calories and activity give the minutes, and the same minutes as hours and minutes
▪ Per hour: weight alone gives an hour of walking, brisk walking, cycling and jogging

■ The same activity, a different number

Weight is a factor in the formula. An hour of walking is 189 kcal at 60 kg
and 252 kcal at 80 kg — about 1.333 times as much. That is the whole reason
two people who walked the same distance get different answers.

■ Where the 1.05 comes from

MET 1.0 is defined as using 3.5 mL of oxygen per kilogram per minute, and
roughly 5 kcal go with every litre of oxygen.
3.5 x 60 = 210 mL/kg/h = 0.21 L/kg/h, and 0.21 x 5 = 1.05 kcal/kg/h.
Nobody chose 1.05. It falls out of the definition.

■ Twenty-two activities

Sleeping 0.9, sitting quietly 1.0, standing and talking 1.8, washing dishes
1.8, cooking 2.0, yoga 2.5, walking slowly 2.8, walking 3.0, vacuuming 3.3,
weights 3.5, down stairs 3.5, brisk walking 4.3, badminton 5.5, slow crawl
5.8, cycling 6.8, jogging 7.0, tennis 8.0, running at 5 mph 8.3, up stairs
8.8, running at 6 mph 9.8, fast crawl 9.8, skipping rope 11.8.

The values follow the Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.).
A MET measures effort, not speed: walking is 2.8 at 2.0 mph, 3.0 at 2.5 mph
and 4.3 at 3.5 mph.

■ Calorie and calorie

On a food label a Calorie with a capital C is a kilocalorie — a thousand of
the small calories used in physics. Same word, a thousandfold apart. This app
writes kcal everywhere, so there is nothing left to guess.

■ What this app does not do

▪ It does not judge whether you are gaining or losing, and it works out no target
▪ It holds no table of food values
▪ It keeps no daily totals and draws no graphs (only the last five entries stay on the device)
▪ It suggests no meals and gives no dietary instructions
▪ It measures no pulse and counts no steps
▪ It offers no medical advice

No account is needed.
The calculation happens on your device, and nothing you type is sent out.

■ What the screen holds

▪ Three topics, one to three input fields, no settings screen
▪ Common cases are one tap away
▪ The last five entries stay in the history; results copy out in one tap
▪ A chart in steps of 5 kg on the per-hour topic, and seven short notes
▪ Japanese and English, chosen by your device language

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For after the walk, when you want to know where the number came from.

NISAKE GAME

What’s new

• An ad now appears when the app starts