Elliptical calories

Dagmarsaraiva

Hello community,
My name is Dagmar and I'm 56 yo, trying to lose wait. I'm back to the gym with my cardio, doing 25 minutes of elliptical every other day.
The thing is, the elliptical show much less calories burned than my fitness pall.
Anyone know how to explain me that, please? Which one should I keep track?
Thank you for reading, and have a healthy day!

JeromeBarry1

Exercise machines are notorious for being inaccurate in their calorie burn estimates. Myfitnesspal exercise database is notorious for being inaccurate in it's calorie burn estimates because of the inaccuracy of the exercise machines and the cycle just continues feeding back inaccuracy.

Don't give up, though. You are burning calories, it's just that the community seems to agree that it's safe to assume a 40% error rate in the calorie estimate, and that it's miss-estimating your burn on the high side.

So, keep sweating. Keep logging the inaccurate numbers. You'll notice that myfitnesspal tells you that you've earned the right to eat exactly as many calories as you exercised. Don't trust it. Eat back only 50% - 75% of your calories if you want to. I don't eat back calories from exercise, and that's even if I log 500 calories of exercise.

TeaBea

JeromeBarry1 wrote: »

Exercise machines are notorious for being inaccurate in their calorie burn estimates. Myfitnesspal exercise database is notorious for being inaccurate in it's calorie burn estimates because of the inaccuracy of the exercise machines and the cycle just continues feeding back inaccuracy.

Don't give up, though. You are burning calories, it's just that the community seems to agree that it's safe to assume a 40% error rate in the calorie estimate, and that it's miss-estimating your burn on the high side.

So, keep sweating. Keep logging the inaccurate numbers. You'll notice that myfitnesspal tells you that you've earned the right to eat exactly as many calories as you exercised. Don't trust it. Eat back only 50% - 75% of your calories if you want to. I don't eat back calories from exercise, and that's even if I log 500 calories of exercise.

But eating back exercise calories is how My Fitness Pal (MFP) is designed. With other weight loss calculators you get exercise built in....not with MFP.

Perhaps the OP has set an aggressive weekly weight loss goal AND exercises quite a bit. That's great for encouraging lean muscle mass loss. Not my goal. I eat back a modest number of exercise calories because I want fat loss.

AnabolicMind2011

Mfp grossly over estimates calories burnt.
Gym machines aren't much better.

What I do is this- if the machine says i burnt 400 calories then I log 150 calories burnt.

sijomial

Use the machine's estimates - it should ask you to enter your weight and may even measure your power output (watts).
Even if not accurate at least it will be proportionate to your effort.
Some machines can be accurate - it's actually silly to assume all exercise machines are inaccurate! But some can be fanciful...

The very generic MFP database entry knows your weight but knows nothing about the intensity of your workout.
Just having one elliptical database entry is pretty dumb - it would be like having the same entry for cycling whether you are going at 10mph or 20mph.

tapwaters

I usually slice what the machine says in half.

tomorrowistoday0000

I second on the slicing the calories in half. I do this because I actually tested it with my polar hear rate monitor and it was off by a lot (even with my age and weight entered). Fitnesspal so no better.