Eating back exercise calories - accuracy!

rachelprogress
rachelprogress Posts: 37 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Just wanted to share a tip from something I recently discovered. Most everyone knows that cardio equipment calorie burn amounts are notoriously high and I've heard that you should typically subtract about 20-30% from the total.

My Nordictrack e11.0 elliptical puts my 30 minute elliptical workout at 570 calories which is ludicrously high. Playing conservatively, -30% would be about 400.

MFP estimates 30 minutes of ellipitcal for me at 157lbs at 404 calories.

I just got the Polar H7 HRM which uses Bluetooth to send workout data to an app.

First I tried the Digifit app (because it autosyncs to MFP) which interpreted my same workout at 260 calories for 30 minutes, taking my weight into account. I found this to be much too low in my mind, as I am in great cardio shape, and go full out animal style on the elliptical for 30 mins, keeping my heart rate in the 160s (my resting HR is 60).

The next day I tried using the Polar Beat app for the workout which interpreted my workout at 330 calories, taking my weight into account. This seems much more reasonable to me and will be the method of measurement I take going forward, as opposed to MFP defaults or other fitness apps interpreting my HRM data.

In summary, 4 different calorie burn numbers for the same workout.
570
400
260
320

If you're eating back exercise calories counting on 570, that's a big difference than an actual burn of 260-330 - you could be overeating by 200-300 cals per day. If you find your weight loss is stuck and your numbers of cals in/cals out seem to make sense, I suggest getting an HRM for your cardio exercises and really checking if your exercise burn numbers are accurate.

Hope that this can help someone...

Replies

  • HikeThatMountain
    HikeThatMountain Posts: 102
    thank you Rachel, that is very interesting. I think with your findings, plus the recommendations of others on this site which I have read (all good) about the Polar H7 HRM, think I might check it out when I'm home on leave in the fall.

    Thank you!
  • rachelprogress
    rachelprogress Posts: 37 Member
    You're very welcome! I found it very interesting as well... I like to get into the "numbers" and the science behind fitness / weight loss, so the HRM seemed a logical step. Luckily my miscalculations hadn't affected my progress thus far that I can tell! I was just amazed at the discrepency. The H7 is really nice, it also auto syncs up to my elliptical and gives the HR on the machine display (but I think most Polar models do this now). I actually first started reading about it from someone else on MFP recommending it in the forums.

    My friend just got one of the none-Bluetooth Polar models, as he does a lot of outdoor training and didn't want to always have his smartphone on him to capture the workout details (with the H7 you need to have your phone within 10m of you to transmit the data to). So keep that in mind when you look into buying one. :)
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