Are calorie counters on workout equipment accurate?

MeganG12345

I enter my age and weight accurately on the elliptical in my building's gym, but the number of calories it says I'm burning seem a little too good to be true. It's a very new machine, so I doubt it's broken.

Example: Today I was on the elliptical for 15 minutes and it said I burned 175 calories. Given the fact that I'm 130lbs I find that kind of hard to believe. I was pushing pretty hard, but that still seems high.

Do you generally trust the counters on exercise equipment?

dad106

When I was first losing, I used the numbers on the equipment and lost fine.

Everything that you do on this site(calorie wise at least) is an estimate. So you may have burned more or you may have burned less. You may think that you are eating 180 calories worth of eggs but in reality you are eating 200.

Bottom line is, don't worry about it too much. If at any point the scale stops going down and starts going up, then you may have a problem. If it does bother you, then just leave a few calories left over at the end of the day to make up for any estimation errors.

kts3639

I have a very basic elliptical at home that doesn't even ask age, weight, etc. and I had been using it's calorie burn calculations up until I got my Polar FT4. I have used the Polar while on the elliptical a few times now, and surprisingly, the elliptical was only off (higher) by about 10-15 calories.

So from my personal experience, it's not terribly off. Hope that helps

_Schatzi_

I use a life fitness elliptical at my YMCA and when I do the manual program it asks for my weight and monitors my hr through the handles. I wear a heart rate monitor (which is of course the best way to know) but I always look out of curiosity when I'm finished to see what the machine says. Typically the elliptical is within 20-30 calories from what my heart rate monitor says.

I think the two important things here are entering your weight, and making sure the machine is getting your heart rate for the duration.

cmcmommy

I find they are off of the amount stated . I walk on the treadmill for 30 min and it will say like 380 cal burned but my HRM will say like 176 . So I was really disappointed thinking I was burning 800 cal in 1 1/2 hr workout when really it was closer to 500 . I used my PT7 HRM for everything now .

whatascene

It's funny because a lot of people on this site that probably the most affordable, basic, semi accurate thing to do is a Heart Rate Monitor. My elliptical machine says I burn LESS than what my monitor says. I think I have a naturally faster heartrate because if I was burning anywhere close to how many calories my heart rate monitor said when I went for a run I wouldn't need this site anymore lol. But anyway, MFP calculates close to the same as my machine does and I've been losing, so don't stress it too much. I always give myself 100-200 calories at the end of the day just in case some sort of calorie or exercise measurement was off.

cwolfman13

It's all an estimate...the most accurate would be a good HRM, but still an estimate. I believe Polar models have tested out best at around 75% accuracy. My general rule of thumb when I was doing the MFP method was to eat back 50% to 75% of my exercise calories to account for estimation error.

Another way of estimating is 1 mile (or equiv of 1 mile on elliptical, etc) is roughly 100 calories.

MeganG12345

Thanks everyone. I'll look into a good heart rate monitor.