What am I really burning?

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Yerblonde
Yerblonde Posts: 27
in Fitness and Exercise
I have been working out regularly for a good 3 months now and I am really enjoying it but I don't get how MFP and my elliptical can come up with such different numbers of calories burned.
I am now up to 30 min on the elliptical and my machine says I am burning about 168 calories on average. But MFP says I burn 348.
I like to enter the lower number because then I know I am not eating over my calories but I am wondering how accurate my other exercises are that I use MFP counts for.

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  • Courtky
    Courtky Posts: 56
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    Mine have always been pretty accurate, even the elliptical one! Mine is usually 10 cal off so its not that bad.. Maybe depends on your weight?
  • bokodasu
    bokodasu Posts: 629 Member
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    Take the machine number - MFP doesn't know how hard you're working out, and it tends to be... optimistic. If you want to be even more accurate, get a HRM that you can set up with all your details and use what it says. I don't know how the machines calculate their numbers, but two different model ellipticals from the same brand give me different calorie counts (one low, one high) compared to what my HRM says, which is pretty much the same for both machines.

    Of course, this is assuming you've set your weight/age correctly in both places - with such a large difference, you might want to double-check you haven't typoed somewhere.

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