How Accurate is the Cardio on MFP?

lalapurpledog

I am fairly new and was wanting to know how accurate cardio is on MFP. It states that I burned 600 calories on the elliptical in 35 minutes. Now, I know the machines are not as accurate (says my personal trainer) but 600 calories? That's a lot. It just seems to good to be true.

YoungDoc2B

Yeah, I've noticed the same. The MFP calculator always seems to be a good 200-300 calories higher than what the machine tells me. Normally, I tend to go with the machine because it seems more accurate, although not 100%. The only way to really gauge how many calories you've burned is to purchase a heart rate monitor (or so I've heard).

StephTheBookworm

I have found it to be extremely inaccurate. I use a heart rate monitor to track my calories burned, and that is much lower than what MFP says.

albayin

The only EP entry I found on MFP tells me around 300 calories burned after 40 minutes...My machine tells me even 1000 calories. So I take both, and take half off. But again I stop tracking the calories burned as they rather confuse me than help me approach my goals.