Ahhh Heart Rate Monitor Vs Cardio Machine Calories Burned

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  • missbazzie
    missbazzie Posts: 5 Member
    antdogs - and anyone else who could help...

    What would be a considerable discrepancy? My HRM sometimes estimates as much as 200 calories more than what the ellipticals/Arcs/treadmills estimate. Example: This mornings workout was on an elliptical for 35 minutes with my avg bmp around 146 which is about 70% of my max HR. The machine calculated 244 calories burned, but my HRM calculated 457 calories burned. That's a difference of 213. On the other hand, MFP and other online calorie calculators estimate 404-439 for 35 minutes on an elliptical.

    I'm not worried about a few calories, but 200+ is the equivalent of my snack calories and I don't want to put my body into a starvation mode because I'm eating too few each day.

    I'm already averaging between the 2 numbers. So for example, today I logged 350 calories for cardio in MFP.
    Does anyone have a better suggestion?
  • phjorg1
    phjorg1 Posts: 642 Member
    Does your hrm know your tested hrmax and vo2max? If not I would trust the machine more.
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    Unfortunately, there is no way to really know whether a given device (machine, HRM, website) is over or under estimating, or by how much. The formulas they use vary greatly, and the formulas are ultimately the determining factors for accuracy.

    In some cases, some devices are "generally accepted" to be using "more accurate" formulas/methods... but to what extent that's true is hard to say. Garmin seems to get touted as the most accurate right now, but who knows for sure.

    IMO, the best thing you can do is to pick 1 source for estimating calorie burns. Use that 1 source consistently for a month or so, logging food and activity as accurately as you can. Then, after a month's time, evaluate things by comparing expected results with actual results. Depending on how closely they match up, you can tweak your estimating appropriately.

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