Accurate Number of Calories used in exercise?

kmtetour

Last night I rode my stationary bike for 18 minutes (I'm just starting out). The bike counts the number of calories I burn, and it said 63. When I go to enter it on MFP as "Stationary bike, very low effort" it says 122. I know MFP factors in weight, and my bike doesn't. So which one is accurate?

kdiamond

Probably neither but I would go with the lower one.

magglett

I don't trust a lot of these things but I do have a heart rate monitor I wear and I use what it tells me.

kmtetour

I did put the lower one, only because I didn't want to say I did more than I did. I don't really have the money to buy a good heart rate monitor, but maybe someday.....

sallyLunn

Or you could just split the difference.

carbonboy

HOW is the stationary bike tracking calories burned? Does it actually measure your heart rate or just use an estimate based on some factors that you input? If you're working up a sweat at least, I would say you're in the 350 calories per hour range.

kmtetour

HOW is the stationary bike tracking calories burned? Does it actually measure your heart rate or just use an estimate based on some factors that you input? If you're working up a sweat at least, I would say you're in the 350 calories per hour range.

Really, just by how fast I go for how long and the tension I have it set to. I'm sure it's not the most accurate, but the difference seemed like a lot.

MizzFitness

There are some good HRM that are only around $30-$40 that I know of. i'd be happy to help you find one. I recently bought a really good HRM & found that on several exercises on here I was burning way more calories than MFP said, but on a few, like yoga, I was burning way less. All the time I was not losing weight was due to me not taking in enough calories & slowing my metabolism because I had inaccurate calorie data. It's a wise investment.