Stupid gym machines!

sunshine79

This week I've set a challenge to burn 750 calories each day from exercise . Day's one and two have gone really well but on Monday whilst at the gym it just dawned on me that there is a huge discrepancy between how many calories the gym machines say I burn and how many my HRM calculates.

Now, the machine at the gym reads my heart rate from the telemetry strap I wear and it asks me to enter my weight. Then how comes after an hours work out on the treadmill combining incline walking and interval running that the treadmill says I've burned 838 calories and my HRM says 560?

Obviously I've taken the lower value just to be sure but why is this? It's very annoying:frown: :frown:

erickirb

Do you enter your sex in the treadmill, if not it may be assuming you are male and men typically burn more calories due to a higher % of muscle.

abricklin

I am about 99% sure that the machines do not use HR to caluculate the calories burned because as you know, you can do an entire workout without touching the HR sensors that are built in. The calculations are done entirely based on the specs it asks you to enter and yes, they are typically 25-30% off for most people, except for the treadmill, that seems to be the most accurate for me. However, I only use the calories from my HRM.

jrich1

use the HRM, the machines use a more general calc and are usually way off