Do you correct the calorie readings on machines?

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Replies

  • JustJennie1
    JustJennie1 Posts: 3,749 Member
    What do gender and height have to do with the amount of work you put into the machine? My machine asks for weight.

    If I was 6ft tall I'll burn a lot more calories than if I was 5ft. Males naturally have more muscle because of their differing hormones, making them burn more calories during the same workout as a female.
    OK, I get what you say about gender, but a 6 ft guy who weighs 170 is skinny. A 5 ft guy who weighs 170 has fat and/or muscle to explain his weight. So how does the height thing work metabolically?

    It doesn't. The machine is calculating calories based on the amount of force you're putting on it. Height has nothing to do with it. As for the HRM those can be inaccurate as well. Depending on the machine I am on the readout could be more or less. When I do the arc trainer my calories on my HRM are 20-30 less than the machine. On the stationary bike it's 50-100 more. On the treadmill HRM could be 100-200 more. I usually take an estimate and run with that.
  • Springerrr
    Springerrr Posts: 44 Member
    1000 calories an hour seems awfully high, but I guess it all depends on how much you weigh too.... What you need to do is find out how much you would burn in an hour if you WEREN'T exercising. I used this:
    http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-exercise/calculators/net-versus-gross-calorie-burn-conversion-calculator.aspx

    Machines (and HRM's!) give you your GROSS calories burned and hence they are OVERESTIMATING your calories burned! They don't take into account the fact that if you weren't exercsing during that time, your body would have burnt some of those calories anyways. With the website I just provided you can find out approximately how much you burn in an hour by putting in fake gross calorie amount (for example, put in 300), then input your info (weight, heaight, sex etc ...) and then it will calculate the nNET amount of calories that you burnt. The difference between the 2 (GROSS - NET) will tell you approximately how much you burn by just being alive and human.

    For me it was a nice number...i burn about 60 calories / hour , which is 1 calorie / minute (also 60 X 24 hours = 1440 = appox my BMR) = . So when I use my HRM all I need to do is take the reading it gives me at the end of my workout and subtract the number of minutes I spent doing it!

    anwyays, i know it all seems a bit complicated, but it isnt really. For more literature on the matter that might explain the GROSS vs NET thing better than me see this:
    http://www.runnersworld.com/weight-loss/how-many-calories-are-you-really-burning?page=single

    This is interesting, but not helpful. I don't see a significant difference between 1000 and 920 (80 resting calories per hour for me). I had already been correcting to 800 (80%) before I made this post which no weight-loss. Now I am going to try 60% to see what happens.
  • Springerrr
    Springerrr Posts: 44 Member
    What do gender and height have to do with the amount of work you put into the machine? My machine asks for weight.

    If I was 6ft tall I'll burn a lot more calories than if I was 5ft. Males naturally have more muscle because of their differing hormones, making them burn more calories during the same workout as a female.
    OK, I get what you say about gender, but a 6 ft guy who weighs 170 is skinny. A 5 ft guy who weighs 170 has fat and/or muscle to explain his weight. So how does the height thing work metabolically?

    It doesn't. The machine is calculating calories based on the amount of force you're putting on it. Height has nothing to do with it. As for the HRM those can be inaccurate as well. Depending on the machine I am on the readout could be more or less. When I do the arc trainer my calories on my HRM are 20-30 less than the machine. On the stationary bike it's 50-100 more. On the treadmill HRM could be 100-200 more. I usually take an estimate and run with that.

    I do notice that when I change the weight, the force required changes quite noticeably. But that probably means the cal/hr changes as well.

    It is interesting because, purely speaking, the machine SHOULD simply measure force over time, which, in mechanical physics, should convert nicely to calories. I got a long letter from a PhD in the elliptical company talking about this principle. It is about a dozen posts down in this thread http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/725013-elliptical-trainer-and-calories-burned.
  • UrbanLotus
    UrbanLotus Posts: 1,163 Member
    I use an HRM, it's the easiest solution
  • Springerrr
    Springerrr Posts: 44 Member
    What do gender and height have to do with the amount of work you put into the machine? My machine asks for weight.

    If I was 6ft tall I'll burn a lot more calories than if I was 5ft. Males naturally have more muscle because of their differing hormones, making them burn more calories during the same workout as a female.
    OK, I get what you say about gender, but a 6 ft guy who weighs 170 is skinny. A 5 ft guy who weighs 170 has fat and/or muscle to explain his weight. So how does the height thing work metabolically?

    It doesn't. The machine is calculating calories based on the amount of force you're putting on it. Height has nothing to do with it. As for the HRM those can be inaccurate as well. Depending on the machine I am on the readout could be more or less. When I do the arc trainer my calories on my HRM are 20-30 less than the machine. On the stationary bike it's 50-100 more. On the treadmill HRM could be 100-200 more. I usually take an estimate and run with that.

    I do notice that when I change the weight, the force required changes quite noticeably. But that probably means the cal/hr changes as well.

    It is interesting because, purely speaking, the machine SHOULD simply measure force over time, which, in mechanical physics, should convert nicely to calories. I got a long letter from a PhD in the elliptical company talking about this principle. It is about a dozen posts down in this thread http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/725013-elliptical-trainer-and-calories-burned.

    Sorry here is the link corrected: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/725013-elliptical-trainer-and-calories-burned

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