How many calories am I really burning on the elliptical?

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alabamaangyl
alabamaangyl Posts: 9
in Fitness and Exercise
I get different results from the machine, fitnesspal, and other exercise calculating websites. My equipment tells me I only burned 183 calories going at a moderate pace for 20 minutes, but fitnesspal says I burned 426... that's a big difference! Can anyone help me out here? Which one is correct?

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  • focused4health
    focused4health Posts: 154 Member
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    No idea what an elliptical is but it is certainly a calorie burning machine if it burns over 20 calories a minute. I use the cardiotech treadmill and at the most extreme mountain interval setting it is lucky to get 10 calories a minute. I expect that the readings in mfp are wrong. go with the reading from your machine.
  • CA_Underdog
    CA_Underdog Posts: 733 Member
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    An eliptical's reading is usually more accurate than MyFitnessPal because it knows your speed, elevation, and resistance. MyFitessPal is assuming a vigorous workout, whereas the machine says your workout was more moderate. If you want even better accuracy, consider wearing a heart rate monitor.
  • acpgee
    acpgee Posts: 7,703 Member
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    My typical workout is 65 minutes on the elliptical targeting a heart rate of 140. My HRM says I burn a little over 500, the machine says around 750 and MFP says 882. I go with the HRM.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    426 for 20 minutes seems ludicrous I'm afraid. Possibly by a huge and elite athlete, maybe....

    If your machine can measure power generated (e.g. displayed in watts) then it could well be pretty accurate.
    183 (or 549/hour) for what you describe as moderate effort seems reasonable to me.

    Even HRMs are just a guide - their advantage is that it's a personal and fairly consistent guide.
  • Edmond_Dantes
    Edmond_Dantes Posts: 185 Member
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    Go with the lower number. That is still an overestimate, but certainly better than the MFP estimate.
  • alabamaangyl
    alabamaangyl Posts: 9
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    Thanks for the tips guys! I'll go with my machine's calorie count to be safe.
  • feefifofumgrrr
    feefifofumgrrr Posts: 2
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    I've been finding that too - MFP usually says that the exercise burned about 3 times as many calories as the gym machines stated. I go with the gym machines...
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    the machine is probably much better than MFP, as the entry in MFP does not take into account speed or resistance. That said machines such as elliptical are known to be off by quite a bit, usually to the high side of things. best bet for elliptical is a HRM, or take the lowest estimate.
  • CTCMom2009
    CTCMom2009 Posts: 263 Member
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    I finally invested in a heart rate monitor to make sure I was being as accurate as possible with my calorie burns.... it's made a difference for me, but going with the lower of the two values would be best if you don't want to get one.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    426 for 20 minutes seems ludicrous I'm afraid. Possibly by a huge and elite athlete, maybe....

    If your machine can measure power generated (e.g. displayed in watts) then it could well be pretty accurate.
    183 (or 549/hour) for what you describe as moderate effort seems reasonable to me.

    Even HRMs are just a guide - their advantage is that it's a personal and fairly consistent guide.

    ellipticals are not as good at giving accurate watts as well as there is a lot of momentum used, not all force applied by the user.
  • lisadona84
    lisadona84 Posts: 2
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    I read some where that an elliptical machine over calculates calories burned by 40%. I usually take my final count and cut it in half. I spent 2 hours on my machine ranging from vigorous to moderate with and average heart rate of 155. The final count was 1300 cals working out to be 650. Better to underestimate the calories you burn.
  • MinnieInMaine
    MinnieInMaine Posts: 6,400 Member
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    183 cal sounds reasonable but as someone else said, even that could be a slight overestimate. If your elliptical shows mileage, one thing I found with the ones in our gym is that, like walking, I tend to earn about 100 cal per mile. So if I go 2.5 miles, that earns me around 250 cal (or close to it anyway). Granted, I also tend to go at a fairly high resistance level though so that may make a difference.

    The only way to know for sure is to test it out. If you eat your exercise calories back and aren't losing after a couple weeks, you may want to cut down and only eat about 75% of them back. Good luck!
  • jchite84
    jchite84 Posts: 467 Member
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    Go with the lower number. MFP tends to over exaggerate quite a bit. In general, running, which is similar to elliptical, burns ~100 calories per mile. Using that as a basis, you likely burned between 175 and 200 calories in 20 minutes, which is close to your machines estimates. For highest level of accuracy get a HRM. For a moderate level of accuracy calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate and find Metabolic Equivalent Tables (available online), and calculate your calories burned per minute or hour. Then use this as the basis for overriding MFPs calculated burn.
  • Hornsby
    Hornsby Posts: 10,322 Member
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    moderate activity on an elliptical for 20 minutes? I would guess a hundred or so. The 400+ is not even close to plausible. 183 could be right (or close), but I would err on the side of it being overestimated.
  • CA_Underdog
    CA_Underdog Posts: 733 Member
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    I read some where that an elliptical machine over calculates calories burned by 40%

    That hasn't been my experience. My heart rate monitor and elliptical machines are typically within 10% of each other. The more variables you punch into the machine before-hand, the better. :)

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