Enquires about treadmill exercising

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pinkdoll1989
pinkdoll1989 Posts: 80 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi. Is the calories burned out stated in the treadmill exercises accurate? Has anyone try the fat burning zone on the treadmill? Is it working? >< I really wanna to lose at least 1-2kg per week...

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  • pamwhite712
    pamwhite712 Posts: 193 Member
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    No, it's not accurate, it's just an estimate. If you're going to use the treadmill on a regular basis you should really get a heart rate monitor.
  • schmenge55
    schmenge55 Posts: 745 Member
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    Polar is a good brand. There are others. About $50 (US) and up. 1-2 kg per week is on the high side. You are better to take the pounds off slowly like .5kg a week or you risk losing lean tissue
  • ashlinmarie
    ashlinmarie Posts: 1,263 Member
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    Polar is my HRM of choice. it is simple and effective and the band is comfortable to wear. I have the FT4 model and it cost 80$ but I found out after buying it that amazon had it for 68$. I'm sure it has gone down since last summer as well. Depending on the treadmill you use, it will sync with that as well and show you your results as you workout.
  • icimani
    icimani Posts: 1,454 Member
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    The more information your treadmill asks you to enter, the more accurate it will be in terms of calories burned.

    The treadmill I use only asks for weight, and even though it's getting info from my HRM, the treadmill tells me that the cals burned is about 15% more than my HRM. I go by my HRM.
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
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    2 kg a week is a totally unrealistic goal unless you have hundreds of pounds to lose and you won't run weight off on a treadmill. Your diet plays 90% of the role in weight loss. Exercise is for fitness not weight loss.
  • AmyMgetsfit
    AmyMgetsfit Posts: 636 Member
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    My treadmill asks for age and weight. I don't have any other kind of gadget to check it against, so I have no idea how accurate it is. That is why I don't track my calories burned because I don't trust the accuracy. For all I know it is telling me I burned 500 calories when I really only burned 300.
  • fanakar
    fanakar Posts: 23
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    This is controversial. When I extrapolated the data based on calories taken from the treadmill the overall caloric deficit matched up almost exactly with the weight loss I experienced in real time. When I used the heart rate monitor, it gave me a caloric burn of about 300 calories less per day. However, if I took this as the actual caloric burn for the month, I would have lost more weight than what the deficit said I should. I don't know, I guess people just don't feel comfortable relying on the treadmill because you run the risk of eating calories you didn't burn and then actually gaining weight. I don't eat back calories so I'm always around 1200-1300 just to be safe and my daily goal baseline has been about 1360 for awhile so it's not like I could shave an extensive amount of weight off with eating less. But like I said, the caloric deficits that I inputed based on the treadmill counts match up exactly with the pounds I lost based on the assumption that a pound is 3500 calories.
  • carld256
    carld256 Posts: 855 Member
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    My treadmill matches up almost exactly with what MFP says I'm burning. So, I just record my walks and don't worry about it.
  • jenilla1
    jenilla1 Posts: 11,118 Member
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    2 kg a week is a totally unrealistic goal unless you have hundreds of pounds to lose and you won't run weight off on a treadmill. Your diet plays 90% of the role in weight loss. Exercise is for fitness not weight loss.

    ^ This! :flowerforyou:
  • Sharonks
    Sharonks Posts: 884 Member
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    I'm poor and don't have an HRM. I take my pulse a few times while I run by counting beats for 6 seconds and then multiplying by 10. I average this out and then use http://www.braydenwm.com/calburn.htm to figure out how many cals I burn. From what I understand, these tables are the same ones the HRMs use.
  • babydiego87
    babydiego87 Posts: 905 Member
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    2 kg a week is a totally unrealistic goal unless you have hundreds of pounds to lose and you won't run weight off on a treadmill. Your diet plays 90% of the role in weight loss. Exercise is for fitness not weight loss.

    That is just a goal. I do control my diet, counting every calories I ate, eating boiled food without any seasoning. It do helps, but still need exercising to make it better.
    exercising is for fitness not losing weight. if you are exercising, you should be eating your calories back to get to your suggested NET total of calories.
  • christine_112
    christine_112 Posts: 5
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    You do realize that boiling food can take away a lot of nutrients and that "seasoning" like fresh herbs are virtually calorie free? Why deprive yourself of taste? And no, the treadmill is not accurate. Heart monitors aren't accurate either. The amount of calories you burn depends on so many factors including your muscle mass, a heart monitor does not know this information. There is no way to be sure. I never eat back my calories for this reason.
  • garciabnm
    garciabnm Posts: 138
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    My treadmill matches up almost exactly with what MFP says I'm burning. So, I just record my walks and don't worry about it.


    ^^^^^^this ^^^
  • tami101
    tami101 Posts: 617 Member
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    My treadmill matches up almost exactly with what MFP says I'm burning. So, I just record my walks and don't worry about it.


    ^^^^^^this ^^^

    ^^^^^^Me too! ^^^^^
  • pamwhite712
    pamwhite712 Posts: 193 Member
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    I also have a Polar FT4. To be safe I only record 75% of the calories it says I burned. I figure I would've burned the other 25% just doing my usual activity. So I only eat back 75% of my calories burned.
  • SassyCalyGirl
    SassyCalyGirl Posts: 1,932 Member
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    I have a Nordic Trac and I have input my age and weight-it still more than doubles my calorie burns. Invest in an HRM-I couldn't live without mine.
  • kbeckley11
    kbeckley11 Posts: 203 Member
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    I'm poor and don't have an HRM. I take my pulse a few times while I run by counting beats for 6 seconds and then multiplying by 10. I average this out and then use http://www.braydenwm.com/calburn.htm to figure out how many cals I burn. From what I understand, these tables are the same ones the HRMs use.

    I just checked the website, and the equation it gives for calories burned per minute is the following:

    Women: C/min = (-20.4022 + 0.4472 x HR - 0.1263 x weight + 0.074 x age) / 4.184

    This states that the heavier a woman is, the less she burns per minute, and there is actually a weight where a woman can gain calories by working out. If you enter a 400 lb, 31 year old female, 90bpm (the reference says this equation works between 90 and 150 bpm) VO2 max unknown, it gives a negative number of calories burned.

    So, I am wondering if anyone can explain this, or tell me the real equation, since this seems to be inaccurate.

    ETA: I found the equation on livestrong, (which puts the formula in terms of pounds instead of kilograms) and it shows it as a positive coefficient for weight rather than negative. However, with that, my calories per minute work out to 16. That seems very high.

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