Exercise bike calories...which is closest?

mabelbabel1

So....I did 12 mins on my bike got my heart rate up to 143 and broke a sweat (nice!)

These are the different calories I get:

My bike says - 61cals
MFP light effort - 137 cals
MFP mod effort - 175 cals

Various other sites are around the MFP figure give or take.

What do you guys think?

mabelbabel1

bump :happy:

mabelbabel1

Anybody?

reneepugh

I ride my exercise bike when I can't bike outside. I always go by what my exercise bike says which is usually a little lower than MFP. Hope this helps.

tuckerrj

I use treadmills, ellipticals and exercise bikes that ask for you to input your age & weight. Normally the calories calculated on the machine are HALF of what shows up on the MFP calculators. That's why I don't eat all of the extra calories it adds on for exercise!!!

tressatnt

Well I did a lot of stationary biking last week with my HRM and I was surprised that the HRM and bike were not far off from each other, but MFP and the bike were WAY off. MFP was WAY high. So, in your case, I'd go with what the bike said. But, you really don't know. Your bike could be completely different than the one I used therefore affecting accuracy. It's really best to just invest in a HRM, I'm so glad I did.

T1mH

I'd probably go with what the piece of exercise equipment was estimating.

You could get a HRM, I love mine but just remember even that is a guess.

heybales

Does it tell you how many watts were spent?

Because watts is literally energy, which means calories.

This will be the most accurate of anything if you can have the stats required. For purpose of eating back those exercise calories correctly, use the NET value. Everything else would be reporting the Gross value.

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CycleMechMETs.html

Edit - gave the wrong calc. link was on above page.

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CycleMETs.html

mabelbabel1

Does it tell you how many watts were spent?

Because watts is literally energy, which means calories.

This will be the most accurate of anything if you can have the stats required. For purpose of eating back those exercise calories correctly, use the NET value. Everything else would be reporting the Gross value.

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CycleMechMETs.html

Edit - gave the wrong calc. link was on above page.

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CycleMETs.html

Thanks for this....it does have a watts reading on it....but I didn't understand what it meant.


Thanks to everyone else too!

deb3129

Does your bike allow you to imput your weight or other info? If not, then the calorie reading is just based on what a person of a predetermined weight (like 150 pounds maybe) would burn, and if you weigh significantly more than its preset weight, it would give you a lower calorie number.

It also depends on the intesity, your speed and how high the resistance is set

mabelbabel1

Does your bike allow you to imput your weight or other info? If not, then the calorie reading is just based on what a person of a predetermined weight (like 150 pounds maybe) would burn, and if you weigh significantly more than its preset weight, it would give you a lower calorie number.

It also depends on the intesity, your speed and how high the resistance is set

Yes, it's got my weight, age, sex, height. it does BMR and fat %. It has a pulse/hrc reader.

I've just been very confused because of the huge differences.....I'm only using my bike to build up my thigh muscles at the moment so not too worried about the cals....but it would be good to know which is right for when it does matter!

Givenitmybest

The bike. I'm basing this on my heart rate monitor. When I bike for 12 mins at a moderate pace I'm burning about 99 cals. It depends on how fast your going and for how long you got your hear rate up. Out of the 12 mins I'll have my heart rate up at the fat burning zone for at least 10 of those.