exercise verses calories

jaj68

hi....new to this site. My exercise bike and my tread mill have a calorie counter built into them. When I log my exercise into my account here......the calories are very different than what my equipment says. Thoughts on this?

fromfattytohealthy

MFP can either over or under shoot the calories you actually burn. The best thing you can do is just get a heart rate monitor and manually put in the calories you've burned.

AllDIVA

Calories burned on here are a bit high. I do not put much stock in them. As long as I burn something I am ok. I plan to purchase a monitor soon for a more accurate count. Just don't add the calories back into you diet per MFP.

jimgatewood

I've found that my machines over estimate the cals. I'd stick with MFP suggestions and use about half of them.


Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Nutrition Facts For Foods

TheRealParisLove

The calorie counts are general. I always go with the counts that seem to best reflect my effort. For instance, I use endomondo to track workouts and the calorie counts there always are higher than the ones on MFP. However, I always feel like Endomondo overestimates my effort (not always). If I feel like I worked really hard and am exhausted after my workout, I go with whichever count it higher.

So far, I usually go with the lower calorie burn. Except yesterday, I went with the higher count yesterday because I was working hard.

jaj68

haha....yeah....I think you are all correct. My bike told me I burned 150 calories or so.....and here it was much higher.

maroonmango211

I'd use a HRM if possible or the exact equipments model you are on at the moment, MFP can try to guess, but honestly it will only work if its judging your heart rate and intensity and even then it's just a guess.

fastforlife1

MFP uses how much you weigh for how many calories you burn. A 250# person burns many more calories than a 150# person. However I don't count my exercise calories and lose much more weight that way. 3 pounds last week not counting exercise calories than over 2 per week that I was burning the 3 weeks before.

47Jacqueline

Yeah, I've found that MFP calories burned exercising are higher than my stationary bicycle so I use the numbers from my machine. The walking calories are probably more accurate, but I just ordered a Fitbit so when that comes I will most likely use the numbers from it.