Calorie confusion.

wazuki011

So I decided to start using my moms exercise bike, its one of those therapeutic fitness, you sit down, has the bars on the side you can grab to tell you your heart rating so on and so forth.

Anyway, I'm confused about how many calories I burn, I go about 14-16mph on it according to the thing that tracks everything.

According to it, I burned 100 calories in 17 minutes and 23 seconds(I was going for 15, but little OCD so I kept going till 100)
According to MFP Stationary bike, I'd burn 111ish, but if I chose regular biking it'd burn about 160 because it didn't have a MPH on stationary bike to choose from.
According to an app on my Iphone called Health Calc, I should have burned 173 calories. So which one is accurate?

I'm 6'2ish 140 pounds atm, but the bike itself doesn't let you put in your weight. So I don't know how accurate it actually is.

I mean the difference in 100 and 111 calories isn't big, but 100 and 173 over 15 minutes can be pretty huge difference. because in 30 minutes thats 200 calories or 330ish. So kinda like to know.

The fact that stationary bike is so many calories under regular bike riding doesn't make sense to me, as you'd move your legs more on the stationary bike. Unless the stationary bike on the options list is set to a standard 10mph instead of the 14-16 I was going.

meggonkgonk

When in doubt use the one based on your own heart rate - that is a major variable in calorie burn estimates. The app on your iPhone may have some wrong information that is causing a bad estimate - it probably assumes a significantly higher heart rate (estimating from your speed most likely). Ignore it, it's an imprecise estimation.

akjmart2002

If you are exercising vigorously (i.e. sweating), you should be burning somewhere between 10 and 15 calories per minute. Individuals vary by how much they weigh (you burn more the more overweight you are) and how fit they are (more fit = fewer calories burned). All machines use some ideal parameters in their equations, which is why you should take them with a grain of salt.

Your best bet it to shell out for a good heart rate monitor, especially one that allows you to input your size metrics and your fitness level, e.g. your V02Max. The Polar FT40 is a good example and you can find it online for about $100.

Evey_bee

Stationary bike might not work as many different muscles in your body as regular bike, as you don't have to engage your whole body as much for balance as well as the actual leg movement, so this may be why regular biking has higher calorie burn. ( i don't know how much this would impact it though)

I think it's probably best to go with the rest of the advice here and bet a heart rate monitor. Until then, or if you don't think you can afford it, and weight lose is your goal, then I would input the lowest of the estimates to be safe.