Calories burned -Fitness Pal vs. Machine

Skeen903

If neither my elliptical nor my stationary bike take into account my age or weight... should I use the calories burned on the fitness pal or the calories burned on the machines? Or perhaps a medium between the two???

Thanks!

juicemoogan

If you really want to know

Get a Heart rate monitor.

Otherwise pick on method and stick with it.. Record machine counts only, or use MFP counts only.

yesthistime

I'd use whichever number is lowest. I wouldn't want to eat exercise calories that I didn't really earn.

c8linmarie

Get a heart rate monitor.

From personal experience, the machines are off more than MFP.

Skeen903

Thanks for the advice! Can anyone suggest a good HRM?

spinedocmfp

I have a polar F7, works very well. I find MFP numbers about 10-15 % high compared to my monitor, but the machines in the gym are usually 30% high. With the machine , the longer the workout, the less high the % discrepancy, a short 10 or 15 min workout is WAY off. Today I did a 30 minute interval workout on an elliptical machine, with my weight input. At the end my monitor was 370 calories burned, the machine said 510 (+28%). Before my monitor, I would just chose the lowest number to be safe. Even with the monitor, I usually give myself a 50 to 100 cal buffer when logging.

bluegrassgrl03

I was skeptical of the high numbers I got on both Precor elliptical machines and MyFitnessPal. So, I got a heart rate monitor with a calorie counter (the Pyle Sports PHRM38 was only $26 on Amazon) and it reports far less. It seems when I do interval training or an elliptical session that keeps my heart rate in the 85% range for the majority of the time, I burn an average of 10 calories/minute. The machine and MFP were averaging more like 14 calories/minute, which adds up to a big difference.

c8linmarie

Here's a thread you might be interested in:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/538198-i-ve-been-duped