No, I doubt you're doing something wrong. Do you use the Curves Smart tag? If so, you'll want to check what number it gives on there. But personally I think Curves themselves always give a way too high number.

Another thing to keep in mind is whether or not your HRM includes your BMR or not, and whether or not the curves number includes it. That's a difference of 30-40 calories easily.

I've used the CurvesSmart key tag, and always averaged around the 400 mark. I'm at a club now without CurvesSmart, but I've still been noting 400 calories on MFP bc the machines feel harder bc I think I'm compensating for not having the CurvesSmart screen.

:ohwell: I worked those machines HARD, and in 3 years I hit 500 Calories Burned (per Their Kiosk) only 3 or 4 times. I think most of the time, the 500 Calories in 30 Minutes is the Exception, Not The Rule, for most of us.

I am having the same concern. According to my Curves smart tag, I burned 520 calories... but I don't think I worked out THAT hard. I work harder than the average Curves memeber there (or so I'm told), but I still think that that number is too high. I'll run on the treadmill for the same amount of time (dripping with sweat, out of breath, etc) and according to the treadmill, I burned about 375 calories. As a compromise, for my curves workout, I just enter Calisthenics, vigorous effort for 26 minutes. Is Curves bumping up their numbers? Should I use the 520 since it's diffucult to really measure calories burned during strength training (as opposed to cardio) and there's a chance that they're right? I can't help but to be skeptical of this number and I feel guilty using it. Any thoughts?

I found an interesting article on Women's Health that shows the difference in calorie burn from cardio and strength training. Curves is both...

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/cardio-vs-strength-training-workouts
Cardio's edge Calorie for calorie, cardio has a slight advantage. You'll burn 8 to 10 calories a minute hoisting weights, compared with 10 to 12 calories a minute running or cycling, says Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., director of research at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Strength's edge Lifting weights gives you a metabolic spike for an hour after a workout because your body is trying hard to help your muscles recover. That means you'll fry an additional 25 percent of the calories you just scorched during your strength session, Westcott says. "So if you burned 200 calories lifting weights, it's really closer to 250 overall." And if you lift heavier weights or rest no more than 30 seconds between sets, you can annihilate even more.

And there's more good news when it comes to iron's fat-socking power. "For every 3 pounds of muscle you build, you'll burn an extra 120 calories a day -- just vegging -- because muscle takes more energy to sustain," Westcott says. Over the course of a year, that's about 10 pounds of fat -- without even changing your diet. Yes, please.

Winner: Strength

My Smart Tag tells me I burn about 380-410 cals each time, though when I just select "Curves Circuit" on MFP, it tells me only 220 cals. Overall, a lot of people say HRMs are the most accurate way of determining cals burned but I don't have one, so I use what the Smart Tag tells me. I don't eat back my cals though so overestimating a burn doesn't have as much of an effect as it would if I did eat them back.

I wear a Polar F4 HRM and even at other gyms the calories burned was much less than what a treadmill or elliptical would give me. By default I take the lower number from the HRM so that I don't get over confident with the calories that I can eat.