Should I do 2 hours of cardio?

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  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
    edited March 2016
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    20yearsyounger wrote: »
    I never had a problems with machines in the early stages.

    For me, I rarely find them accurate. I had to resort to a treadmill the other night as I'd picked up a mild injury at a race last weekend and needed to work it off. The lifefitness machine estimated 600 cals in about 20 minutes, rather than the hour I'd expect it to take.

    Completely OTT.

    Lifefitness bike then estimated nearly 300 cals for another 20 minutes.

  • selina884
    selina884 Posts: 826 Member
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    People tend to say machines overestimate calorie burn but ive used a treadmill and elliptical with a hrm and they seem to be the same?

    Are both wrong?
  • 20yearsyounger
    20yearsyounger Posts: 1,643 Member
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    MeanderingMammal wrote: »
    20yearsyounger wrote: »
    I never had a problems with machines in the early stages.

    For me, I rarely find them accurate. I had to resort to a treadmill the other night as I'd picked up a mild injury at a race last weekend and needed to work it off. The lifefitness machine estimated 600 cals in about 20 minutes, rather than the hour I'd expect it to take.

    Completely OTT.

    Lifefitness bike then estimated nearly 300 cals for another 20 minutes.

    yeah your first estimate seemed ridiculous. I guess I am lucky. I get roughly the same 100 cal per mile at the 155 setting at avg 6mph. When I started tracking at 180, I got 800-900 cal/hr on a bike/elliptical and lost on that.
  • 20yearsyounger
    20yearsyounger Posts: 1,643 Member
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    selina884 wrote: »
    People tend to say machines overestimate calorie burn but ive used a treadmill and elliptical with a hrm and they seem to be the same?

    Are both wrong?
    They are both wrong if you use those numbers, estimate your food correctly, but you are not getting the desired results. If you are getting the desired results, keep foing until you dont.
  • robertw486
    robertw486 Posts: 2,390 Member
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    selina884 wrote: »
    People tend to say machines overestimate calorie burn but ive used a treadmill and elliptical with a hrm and they seem to be the same?

    Are both wrong?

    People tend to say a lot of things that may or may not be true, depending on what they experience.

    For the treadmill you could use standard formulas to compare for walking or running, though you would have to calculate the walk vs run time individually.

    runnersworld.com/weight-loss/how-many-calories-are-you-really-burning

    That link gives numbers at the bottom to calculate on speed and size.

    For an elliptical figuring out if it's near correct would be harder, but if you know your heart rate at steady state running and actual calorie burn for running, you could use that as a gauge to see if the effort on the elliptical and calorie burn are close or way off.

    It could be that your HRM and the machines you use are all close, it could be that they all estimate high, or maybe even low. It all boils down to the quality and power measures of each, along with the algorithms they use.

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