Exercise tracker accurate?

hobbitses333

The exercise tracker says I burn 850 calories for a 45 min elliptical session. Wow!! Seems too good to be true, even at 300 lbs...any insights?

Duck_Puddle

Which tracker? While it does seem high, if you’re using a Fitbit, the calorie burn it gives you includes the calories you burned by doing the exercise as well as the calories you burned had you been sitting on the couch for that same time. Not all trackers include that. And most calculators do not.

And regardless of what tracker or calculator it is, it is just an estimate. It might be reasonably close, it might be over, it might be under. The best approach is to go with something consistently (meaning go with the tracker, or 50% of the tracker or something) for 4-6 weeks, track your food and see if your weight changes as expected. Adjust from there.

rickdkitson

The trackers also take heart rate into consideration. If you are new to working out your heart rate will be much higher giving you an overly high reading. As your cardio fitness increases you will get a lower indicated burn for the same workout. Also as you get in better overall fitness your body becomes more efficient at exercises you do repeatedly so the indicated burn will also drop.

Don't obsess with calories burned, there is simply no way to really accurately track them outside of a lab setting with specialized equipment. (Also don't obsess with calories in because the natural variability in foods coupled with the fact that nutritional labels can be 20% off per FDA guidelines). Measuring and tracking them is good, it helps keep you on track and to pick workouts and meals that are most beneficial, but CICO is not your goal, a healthy weight and good muscle tone and fitness is what you want so concentrate on achieving that.

Look at the trend on the scale, not the daily measurements but the long term trend and look in the mirror. If you like what you are seeing then you are doing OK.

AnnPT77

rickdkitson wrote: »

The trackers also take heart rate into consideration. If you are new to working out your heart rate will be much higher giving you an overly high reading. As your cardio fitness increases you will get a lower indicated burn for the same workout. Also as you get in better overall fitness your body becomes more efficient at exercises you do repeatedly so the indicated burn will also drop.

Don't obsess with calories burned, there is simply no way to really accurately track them outside of a lab setting with specialized equipment. (Also don't obsess with calories in because the natural variability in foods coupled with the fact that nutritional labels can be 20% off per FDA guidelines). Measuring and tracking them is good, it helps keep you on track and to pick workouts and meals that are most beneficial, but CICO is not your goal, a healthy weight and good muscle tone and fitness is what you want so concentrate on achieving that.

Look at the trend on the scale, not the daily measurements but the long term trend and look in the mirror. If you like what you are seeing then you are doing OK.

To the bolded: Nope. The work is the work, so the burn doesn't change much with increased fitness, even though any given workout feels easier. For anything that involves moving the body through space, the burn decreases with decreasing body weight, though.

OP: 850 for 45 minutes on the elliptical seems high to me, too. Try eating back 50% of exercise calories, monitor for 4-6 weeks, then adjust. It's all estimates, but applied experience tells you how to tweak behavior to accomplish your goals.

rickdkitson

AnnPT77 wrote: »

.....
To the bolded: Nope. The work is the work, so the burn doesn't change much with increased fitness, even though any given workout feels easier. For anything that involves moving the body through space, the burn decreases with decreasing body weight, though.

...

I agree that the work is the work, if you are considering productive energy expended, but the increased efficiency of the muscles as they become accustomed to a task results in less energy expended for the same work output.

Deviette

AnnPT77 wrote: »

rickdkitson wrote: »

The trackers also take heart rate into consideration. If you are new to working out your heart rate will be much higher giving you an overly high reading. As your cardio fitness increases you will get a lower indicated burn for the same workout. Also as you get in better overall fitness your body becomes more efficient at exercises you do repeatedly so the indicated burn will also drop.

Don't obsess with calories burned, there is simply no way to really accurately track them outside of a lab setting with specialized equipment. (Also don't obsess with calories in because the natural variability in foods coupled with the fact that nutritional labels can be 20% off per FDA guidelines). Measuring and tracking them is good, it helps keep you on track and to pick workouts and meals that are most beneficial, but CICO is not your goal, a healthy weight and good muscle tone and fitness is what you want so concentrate on achieving that.

Look at the trend on the scale, not the daily measurements but the long term trend and look in the mirror. If you like what you are seeing then you are doing OK.

To the bolded: Nope. The work is the work, so the burn doesn't change much with increased fitness, even though any given workout feels easier. For anything that involves moving the body through space, the burn decreases with decreasing body weight, though.

OP: 850 for 45 minutes on the elliptical seems high to me, too. Try eating back 50% of exercise calories, monitor for 4-6 weeks, then adjust. It's all estimates, but applied experience tells you how to tweak behavior to accomplish your goals.

You body become more efficient the fitter you get. Studies show that RMR can actually decrease when exercise increase. Of course we're not saying that someone doing no exercise and someone doing loads of exercise will be burning the same amount. Studies show that people doing a medium quantity of exercise and people doing a high amount of exercise have almost the same amount of total energy expenditure. It's widely known (anecdotally) that when people go to the gym, they are often more lazy for the rest of the day. Who hasn't come home from a heavy workout and slouched on the sofa?

Some reading for you:
https://cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)01577-8

OP:
I always assume that what MFP tells me I've burn is 30-50% higher than it actually is (depending on the intensity of my sessions). I normally reduce the "time" I've worked out for to account for this (so for example, when I do a 90min training session, I reduce it to 60mins. I do 3.5 hours of judo Saturday morning, but 2 hours of that is teaching, so I'm not burning nearly as much, so I log that 3.5 hours as only 90 mins.)

AnnPT77

rickdkitson wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

.....
To the bolded: Nope. The work is the work, so the burn doesn't change much with increased fitness, even though any given workout feels easier. For anything that involves moving the body through space, the burn decreases with decreasing body weight, though.

...

I agree that the work is the work, if you are considering productive energy expended, but the increased efficiency of the muscles as they become accustomed to a task results in less energy expended for the same work output.

A fit 150 pound person running a mile in X minutes burns approximately the same number of calories as an unfit 150 pound person doing the same. A heart rate monitor - especially one that uses age estimated HR ranges - will tend to give a different calorie estimate because the fit person tends to do it at a lower heart rate, but that's ones of the flaws in HRM calorie estimates, not a demonstration that fit people are more efficient.