Whoa! ENDOMONDO Calories Burned Estimates are WAY HIGH

Thanks Kathy,

I like the Nike+ Fuel Band for encouragement purposes...I must admit I'm annoyed there is still no Android app, they promised one by Summer 2012. They only show the iPhone love :-(

I have a BMF but got it before the bluetooth version existed, I hated that I had to wait until I got home to know how my activity measured up for the day.

Good News!!! The Android Nike+ App has been out for about a month or so. I did some beta testing with it, and LOVE IT!! I haven't redownloaded from the Play store. It also works with the HRM I have, but since I usually am on a treadmill, I haven't used the app much. It also uses the phone's accelerometer, so you need to use an arm band - and you need to do a couple of calibration runs with it for accurate distance calculation.

Last weekend my daughter and I walked up to the diner and back. Our coffee walk.
Out of curiosity I donned my info tracking gadgets. I keep them current.

Tale of the Tape:

Omron HJ-112 Pedometer 3081 steps, 2997 anaerobic steps in 27 min, 172 Kcal, 1.36 miles

Endomondo Walking, Duration 29:23, Distance 1.4, Avg. Speed 2.85, Avg Pace 21:01 min, Calories 275

Polar F6 HRM Duration 30:06, In Zone 30:06, Heart Rate Max 116 or 72% Avg 106 or 65%, Calories 227 60% Fat

I used to use MapMyRun for my walks and typically that app would have my calorie burn around 380 for one hour walk at 3.5 mph. Now that Endomondo syncs with MFP I have been trying that. Endomondo put my 66 minute walk at 483 burn. Does one app consider elevation gain/loss as I walk in a hilly neighborhood? I eat back most of my calories burned, so I have been assuming that Endomondo is over estimating my calorie burn by at least 100.

Did you know that all calories burned are estimates based on formulas that are mathematical and not able to be accurate?

The only way to know exactly what you burn is to have metabolic testing.

There are a number of different formulas, but none will fit you exactly. And, as your body becomes more efficient, you'll actually burn less calories! My point is simply this, use them as a guide, and use the same method for all your measurements. Even HRMs are estimates, but fortunately they are based on the HR which is a better predictor of effort in your workouts.

Completely irrelevant to the topic. Of course they are not 100% accurate and most everyone here does use them as a guide. Problem is trying to figure out WHICH number to use given the fact that some of us are getting wildly different numbers.

It's completely relevant to the topic. People think all these gadgets and apps can be spot on, but they can't because of the exact things he mentioned. For the apps, if you aren't measuring your heartrate, it's pure speculation as to your fitness level and how difficult it might be for you to perorm that walk. If someone is just starting out, is obese, out of shape, they are going to expend more energy to walk for an hour than a person that is in peak condition and could easily RUN for 60 minutes instead of walking.

The point is, don't put so much faith in them, use them as a guide.

At this point I can't recommend Endomondo to anyone if they're using it to calculate calorie burn. If they want to use the other features of it, it's a decent app, although I think there are better ones out there.

I use Runkeeper and have for over a year. It's calorie numbers are pretty similar to MFP. For grins last night I went out for a walk/jog wearing my HRM and used Endo instead of RK. Endo calculated my burn at 444 calories for my quick 35 minute route (I had already done 30DS before I went out) and I averaged 4.2mph. When I imported the .gpx file into RK it calculated that I had burned 350 calories. If I go into MFP and enter 35 minutes walked for me it comes up with 350 calories for a 4.0MPH walk.

Did I actually burn 350 calories? I have no idea. Do I think that I burned 444 calories? I'm more skeptical of that than I am of 350.

So in a nutshell, if you're really looking to calculate your calorie burn, DON'T go by the Endomondo numbers. And since MFP is using the Endo numbers if you have your accounts linked, you're probably inserting sunshine where sunshine isn't typically found.

Haven't used endomondo, but do have a free app on my phone called cardio trainer, it's free very easy to use you can select various activities ie walking, cycling etc and it will track where you hav gone, your average speed, distance covered, time, calories burned, and its quite bang on as I wore my hrm at the same time to compare.

I've found if you use a decent HRM with the bluetooth synced up Endo Calorie counts are a little high but not bad.

i use RunKeeper app but its not compatible with MFP...for me at 191 lbs...a 30 minute walk at avg speed of 3 mph it tells me i burn about 140 calories......so id say that is definitely WAY off and would not go by that at all.

sounds about right to me,
see http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburnedwalking.htm

I use endomondo with a HRM, so I guess I don't have a problem there, but sometimes the HRM bugs out on me (or it needs a changing of batteries) and when I do that, the calories are about the same as I would think they would have been otherwise.

The only thing I can suggest is that perhaps you had your GPS on and your GPS wasn't functioning properly so it thought that, say, in an hour you did like 5 miles or something (where you would HAVE to be jogging to achieve that pace). I know my roommate has had that happen to her before. She looked at her map and even though she was going in a straight line, the GPS was zig-zagging like crazy so it thought she had done twice as many miles as she really had done (granted, this was on her iPod with a different app).