Calorie accuracy on gym machines?

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kdtesoriero
kdtesoriero Posts: 141 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Are the calorie counts on the cardio equipment accurate or am I better off using some other equipment for this? Do heart rate monitors tell you how many calories were burned?

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  • godlikepoetyes
    godlikepoetyes Posts: 442 Member
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    No. They are not accurate. I have a Polar A 360 and I love it. It has a wrist heart monitor. But I got this recently. When I was losing, I just used MFP's exercise calories and they worked fine.
  • ROBOTFOOD
    ROBOTFOOD Posts: 5,527 Member
    edited May 2016
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    I have found my gym's TM's to overestimate my burns by 28%. I was just curious. I don't track anything. Just pace.

    I use a chest strap w my Garmin Fenix 3 (I like gadgets).
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    edited May 2016
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    Some are accurate (more accurate than HRMs), some will be high, some will be low. Some will be high or low for some people and not others.

    No HRMs don't tell you calories burned - they count heartbeats. They can give a reasonable/usable estimate under certain conditions unless you are an outlier in terms of fitness and/or exercise heart rate,

    If the machines ask your weight and give you a power reading (typically watts) then there's a higher chance they are accurate.

    Accuracy isn't actually as important as people make out (for the majority of exercisers) - "reasonable" is fine.
  • healthy491
    healthy491 Posts: 384 Member
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    No they are not accurate. I have a fitbit and The treadmill underestimates calories burned and the elliptical overestimates.
  • Jams009
    Jams009 Posts: 345 Member
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    No. Neither are fitbits from what I understand.

    There's no 100% accurate way to know how many calories you burn, but the best way is to log your food accurately and consistently and watch the scale over a long period of time.

    1lb of fat = 3500 calories. So if on average you're losing 1lb over 7 days that's 3500/7 = 500 calories per day under your TDEE. If you ate 1200 calories per day on average that means your TDEE is about 1700. Use a BMR calculator to work out your BMR and deduct that from your TDEE. That number is roughly how many calories you burn from exercise on average per day.

    That's the best you can do. Personally I don't bother. I just watch the scale and adjust my calorie goals depending on whether I want to go up, down, or stay the same. I've been doing it long enough that I know what my TDEE is -/+100cal.
  • Ws2016
    Ws2016 Posts: 432 Member
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    He ones at our Y are accurate at leadt based on heart rate.
  • missashleigh92
    missashleigh92 Posts: 37 Member
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    I only log 50% of what the gym machines say so I don't eat back too many calories
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    Cutaway_Collar wrote: »
    They are only an estimate. And manufacturers often make them lie a little so the users will adopt it. In reality, you should skim 30% of what it says.

    If it doesn't know the truth, how can it reliably tell you the answer is 30 % more than the truth?

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