Calories burned on treadmill accuracy

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chadraeder3
chadraeder3 Posts: 279 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Forgive me if this has been asked but I did a search on here and could not find a answer.

I am fairly new to treadmill and other cardio machines at the gym I normally do walking in the woods but at my gym they have Startrac treadmills (very professional equipment) I normally put in manual program enter my weight and time. The handrails have heart monitor sensors I test my heart rate every now and then to check about where my heart rate is. My settings are usually 60 minutes my current weight which is about 250 lbs and I change the speed and incline to try and keep my heart rate at or above 120. The calories burned usually read out 400 or above depending on how hard I push myself. For example tonight I did a 60 minute workout on the treadmill the first couple minute I did a warmup going up to about 3.7 with no incline then I increased speed to 6.0 for a couple minutes to get the heart rate up and then dropped it back to about 3.9 and steadily increased the incline starting at 2% up to 11% between 8% and 11% I decreased speed to about 3.2 and between my heart rate got up according to the treadmill to about 145. The readout after the workout said time was 62 minutes my average speed was 3.4 average incline of 5.9 with a distance 3.48 the calories it said 676.

When I put my cardio in to MFP I always put in less then what the machine says.

I was wondering if anyone knows of any studies that test the accuracy of that brand of treadmill. I am going to get a heart rate strap but until I do I was wondering what people thought about the accuracy.

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  • Maridar
    Maridar Posts: 164 Member
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    I doubt the accuracy. I run at home for 40 min and although it says I burned 510 cal I usually login 480 or less just to be on the safe side but I am sweating like crazy after the workout
  • srothenberg9395
    srothenberg9395 Posts: 6
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    I have yet to invest in a heart rate monitor. So I do rely on cardio machines' calorie counters to help me estimate the number of calories burned, however I consider it to be only a rough estimate. About a year ago I switched gyms. I noticed that there was a noticeable difference in the number of calories I was reportedly burning using the new machines, despite the fact that my workout was identical. While I don't usually take advantage of it, I have noticed that the treadmills at this gym give you the option to add additional information such as height and if you hold onto the sidebars, they will measure your heart rate to provide you with a more accurate estimate. I would imagine that this could significantly increase the accuracy of the machines. The two things I keep wondering is a. interval training is supposed to burn more calories than simply maintaining a constant jog? I don't know if treadmills account for this as they seem to have a set number of calories/hour for any given speed/incline. Also I would imagine that a person who is tall and muscular would burn fewer calories/ hour for a given workout than a person who may weigh the same about but be out of shape and shorter (meaning they have a higher bmi) I also found this article below which I think is interesting

    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/accuracy-exercise-machines/story?id=18559149

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