is the number of calorie burned on workout machines accurate?

robertw486

Machines vary. Some machines are more accurate than others, and Google is your friend. If you search you can sometimes find studies on various types of machines, including how accurate or inaccurate they might be.

You can also compare other measures, such as the feedback loop you have on your weight loss trend. Though it gets a bit murky at times, if you are estimating too high or too low it should show up in your long term trends.

The same applies to fitness trackers. Some people find they are very accurate for them, others do not.

HoneyBadger302

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Not questioning your accuracy, but out of curiousity (since I have some challenges in this area myself): What has convinced you that the exercise calorie estimates are too low, vs. your actual TDEE is higher than estimated?

My effective TDEE is higher than a lot of so-called calculators say, but I have a hard time believing that exercise calories are so underestimated that they make up the whole difference (maybe part). If it were a closer thing numerically, I'm not sure how I'd know which accounted for it.

Not that it really matters . . . as long as we know what calorie adjustments to make in intake, it all works out fine.

The main one is that I've worked on losing weight (no planned exercise) in the past a couple times, and numbers were pretty on point.

If I'm tracking my calories really closely, per my TDEE, my deficit should be about 1/2 pound a week loss. If I'm being really good about weighing and measuring my food, I will very quickly start losing much faster. I've used a steps tracker (both phone and wrist) and outside of my workouts, I'm not an active person per any standard (maybe 3-5K steps a day at most unless I have some other activity going on).

Granted, I am a fidgeter, but my overall activity outside of workouts doesn't align with my intake vs loss - leaving exercise the variable.

AnnPT77

HoneyBadger155 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Not questioning your accuracy, but out of curiousity (since I have some challenges in this area myself): What has convinced you that the exercise calorie estimates are too low, vs. your actual TDEE is higher than estimated?

My effective TDEE is higher than a lot of so-called calculators say, but I have a hard time believing that exercise calories are so underestimated that they make up the whole difference (maybe part). If it were a closer thing numerically, I'm not sure how I'd know which accounted for it.

Not that it really matters . . . as long as we know what calorie adjustments to make in intake, it all works out fine.

The main one is that I've worked on losing weight (no planned exercise) in the past a couple times, and numbers were pretty on point.

If I'm tracking my calories really closely, per my TDEE, my deficit should be about 1/2 pound a week loss. If I'm being really good about weighing and measuring my food, I will very quickly start losing much faster. I've used a steps tracker (both phone and wrist) and outside of my workouts, I'm not an active person per any standard (maybe 3-5K steps a day at most unless I have some other activity going on).

Granted, I am a fidgeter, but my overall activity outside of workouts doesn't align with my intake vs loss - leaving exercise the variable.

FWIW, even though it's tangent at best, probably off topic, to the thread:

My activity level doesn't align with my intake and loss, either . . . but I'd have to double my routine exercise calories - or more - to account for the difference. MFP thinks I should maintain on something like 1500 (before exercise). TDEE calculators set at sedentary (i.e., best guess at before exercise) usually say around the same. The actual answer (based on 4 years of logging and scale results) is somewhere around, probably a bit above, 2000. There's no possible way my 45 minute spin class or hour of on-water rowing is giving me 500+ extra net calories every day on top of my usually 275-350 estimates. (I'm a freakin' li'l ol' lady, age 63, not a titan of sport .)

In the last 7 days, I've averaged right around 5,000 steps, which is on the high side if I were looking at an annual average. I asked two friends who are usually honest (and bad/transparent liars) if I'm fidgety; they say not. My Garmin, which I wear all day every day except for charging (usually when I'm in the shower for a few minutes), and which knows my actual (not just age-estimated) max heart rate, says I've burned an average of 1635 calories daily for the last 7 days, including exercise (I grant it's been a week of bad rowing weather, so normal average for 7 days in season would be more like 1800-some).

Looking back over the last few weeks, in weeks I fully logged, my average gross intake was 2200-2300 calories. (I skip more days in maintenance, usually on hard-to-log days that tend to be high days, so the actual daily average over time is almost certainly higher). I use a food scale for everything I eat at home, which is most of the time, and chain estimates (which people seem mostly to regard as low) when I eat at chains. I maybe eat at non-chains once a week-ish, and try to guess high (or nowadays, sometimes just skip logging ).

Per Libra, my weight trend has been in the mid-130s, mostly around 136ish, (not climbing consistently, noodling up and down by a pound or two (daily weights swing more because of high days)). My oncologists did a full-torso scan to make sure I had nothing strange going on (since I'm a cancer survivor) because I lost unusually fast for my calorie level (1.5-2 pounds weekly on what should've been a 0.5lb or so deficit). I've had multiple rounds of blood tests (I have them every 6 months for my hypothyroidism, and the doc adds various other tests each time for general health monitoring). Everything looks fine.

In total, this makes me conclude that TDEE/NEAT "calcultors" can be wrong. I'm not saying that's true for you, just that it can be true IMO. I suspect their estimates can be wrong to either the high or low side. I don't believe it's common, in cases where logging is reasonably accurate, and profile settings likewise.

Just to pull it back to the vicinity of the thread: I think exercise estimates - from nearly any source - can be wrong, too. They're probably more like to be wrong to the high side, for marketing reasons already discussed, and because of gross/net confusion. If you think your difference is exercise estimates, I have no reason to doubt you.

HoneyBadger302

AnnPT77 wrote: »

........

(just not quoting to save the screen space LOL)

So, historically (before the waist-line killing desk job) I tended to eat WAY more than any calculator would have ever given me. I was active, and fairly fit, but not a marathon runner or extreme athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but I maintained (at 5' 7", 19-~34 years old, 128-131 pounds) eating 2500-upwards of 5,000 calories a day. When I was regularly working out (police academy for example) I was eating 3500-5,000 a day. As much or more than a lot of the males in our group. And I didn't gain weight.

When I got the desk job, however, the weight crept up and not all that slowly. By the time I was 38 I hit my highest weight ever (~166 - ish - I didn't get on a scale until I started to lose a teensy bit, so it's kinda a guess). In order to lose (no extra exercise and a pretty sedentary life outside of work) at that time it took being right on the mark to get expected losses.

Now that my fitness is improving again, my lifting is finally advancing again, and I'm getting closer to goal (still have 10-15 to go), I'm finding (again), my intake needs aren't quite in line with the calculators.

Could be that I just tend to put on more muscle than the average woman (always have been pretty strong for my size/build) and maybe my underlying mass just burns more than average, but when that deteriorates, not so much? Kind of a wild guess, I know what the scale and numbers show/reveal, but not positive "why." Not sure how much intensity affects the burn either - I know it affects it, but that can be really hard to calculate sometimes!

AnnPT77

FWIW (I have no idea): Short Concept 2 rowing machine workout tonight (2 x 10' + 2'-ish CD).

Garmin Vivoactive 3 with chest belt, knows I'm indoor rowing, knows actual HRmax, estimate includes CD: 177 calories.
Concept 2 calorie estimate (not including CD), weight adjusted: 199 calories.

Plenty close enough for government work?

nooshi713

I find the machines quite accurate for me. I do find when entering the exercise in MFP that it tends to underestimate my calorie burn from jogging, walking, or running but overestimates for other machines like rowing or elliptical, for example.