Calorie counter on the elliptical machine?

mehaffeymk

Are the calorie counters that count how many calories you lose on the elliptical machines (whatever other gym machines) accurate? I put in my age and weight and check my heart rate often on the machine to maybe help it along but I don't know really how it knows. I really wanna know pretty close to how many i'm burning because i eat those calories back and i don't wanna be eating too many calories back. should i invest in a chest strap heart monitor that has the calories burned feature?

aproc

No, they are not. There are so many other factors involved in how many calories you burn than just your age and weight. The machines are typically way off for most people. I don't own a hrm so can't really give advice on that. I just typically log my exercise on here for half the time I actually did if I decide to log it.

Masterdo

The machine uses your age, weight and speed to calculate calories, your heart rate is more for your own validation and a courtesy of sorts, it's not used in the calculation. Also, calories are not a mystical measure unit, it measures energy. The machine knows PRECISELY how much energy you are producing using the machine, the calculation is just to evaluate how much you actually had to use to produce that output (no machine, human body included, has a 1:1 efficiency).

A low-end HRM would use your age, weight and HR. This calculation is based on the linear relation between your HR and VO2 consumption, which in turn is directly linked to your energy expenditure. It's also an approximation, it's not a magical thing either...

The precision in both cases is quite low, documentation mentions error margins up to 20%. To give you an idea, even when you go for metabolic tests, on a treadmill with an oxygen mask and a heart rate strap directly linked to a computer system, even then the error rate is up to 5%.

You will not get ultra precise information, but both the machine and the HRM are a good enough estimate for most. Even MFP's values, if measured with honesty, are very good for cardio activities. The calculations for all these methods are pretty standard and very very similar, and they are based on something like 50 years of research on thousands of subjects.

We are not special snowflakes to that extend

mehaffeymk

wow i had to read that post twice Masterdo. I learned alot just now. lol. Thanks for the input!