Cardio Machines vs. MFP

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  • dave4d
    dave4d Posts: 1,155 Member
    I would agree that you should buy a HRM. For the last 8 months, I have relied on the information in MFP to determine how many calories I was burning during a 30 minute workout on the elliptical. My weight loss has proceeded VERY slowly. I couldn't understand why because I was burning about 500+ calories everyday (according to MFP) and eating about 1800. I was losing weight but it was painfully slow.

    Over the holidays, I bought a Polar FT4. I loaded in all the appropriate information and started my workout. After thirty minutes, I had only burned 250 calories according to the HRM. All this time, I thought I had been burning twice as much!!! According to the elliptical, I was only burning about 150 after 30 minutes.

    So, my advice would be to buy an HRM if you can afford it. I'm glad I did. I seriously though something was medically wrong with me because my weight loss had been so slow. Come to find out, I wasn't burning as many calories as I thought I was. So now, I stay in the gym and do either the elliptical, the treadmill or the stationary bike (or all three!) until I've burned at least 500 calories - based on my HRM.

    I don't know if it is because I have a cheaper heart rate monitor, or what, but when I wear my watch on the machines, it throws my numbers out of .whack. One of them goes nuts on my heart rate, and neither of them match for results. I just go by the machine, but wear the strap to monitor my heart rate.

    One thing to remember while using a heart rate monitor, It adds up all the calories burned for the time that you wear it, so you need to deduct some from your burn to take into account your BMR burn from that same time period. For example, if your BMR is 1200 calories, and you workout for ah hour, you need to subtract 50 calories from what your Heart rate monitor tells you to get your actual burn from exercise.

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