How accurate are the treadmills?

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ashleyrongo
ashleyrongo Posts: 8 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
So I worked out last night and I did an hour on the treadmill. I set all my calculations properly, 20 years old, 215 lbs.... I was going on an incline of 10.0 and a speed of 3.5 consistently for the first 50 minutes and then I ran on an incline of 2.5 at a speed of 5 for the last 10 minutes. At the end of the workout it said I burned 740 calories... How accurate it this?
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Replies

  • sanfromny
    sanfromny Posts: 770 Member
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    That sounds pretty close to right

  • 3dogsrunning
    3dogsrunning Posts: 27,167 Member
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    Did you hold onto the rails when you were walking in the incline? If so, you can't rely on the number as it will reduce it by a lot.

    Regardless, 710 calories an hour is an extremely high number. I'd be very cautious believing this number.
  • sanfromny
    sanfromny Posts: 770 Member
    edited February 2016
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    On a 10 inlcine at a consistent 3.5 pace I can usually burn about 400-500 in 60 mins and I'm 50lbs lighter. This is with me keying into the treadmill and also wearing my HR monitor with my chest strap. Thsi is why I'm thinking it may not be too off but it also depends what kind of effort you really exerted also
  • JayZ1488
    JayZ1488 Posts: 258 Member
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    3dogsrunning wrote: »
    Did you hold onto the rails when you were walking in the incline? If so, you can't rely on the number as it will reduce it by a lot.

    Regardless, 710 calories an hour is an extremely high number. I'd be very cautious believing this number.

    How doe that sound high. Aren't the machines suppose to be close to accurate.
  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
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    Some machines are more accurate than others. Being able to enter user settings (gender, age, weight, height) helps. But the machine really can't tell how much exertion you're putting out.
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
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    I personally always give machines a 25% margin of error especially when choosing to eat back calories burned from machines.

    It seems a little high to me, 3.5 is a very slow walking pace for me on the treadmill.
  • 3dogsrunning
    3dogsrunning Posts: 27,167 Member
    edited February 2016
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    JayZ1488 wrote: »
    3dogsrunning wrote: »
    Did you hold onto the rails when you were walking in the incline? If so, you can't rely on the number as it will reduce it by a lot.

    Regardless, 710 calories an hour is an extremely high number. I'd be very cautious believing this number.

    How doe that sound high. Aren't the machines suppose to be close to accurate.

    It all depends on the machine.

    10 calories a minute is the high end of what is sustainable for the average person.

    The walking pace is slow, although the incline will crank up the effort. However, at the OP's weight, we are talking the same effort as OP running about 5 miles in the same time frame.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    gia07 wrote: »
    I personally always give machines a 25% margin of error especially when choosing to eat back calories burned from machines.

    It seems a little high to me, 3.5 is a very slow walking pace for me on the treadmill.

    Depends how tall you are, honestly. 3.5 is pretty fast for me. Over 4, I have to run, pretty much. I usually go for a higher incline and go down to 3.3.

    OP, it depends if you're holding the rail or not. If you are, you can already take off 20% of that. Otherwise, people say that treadmills overestimate calories, but the times I used my heart rate monitor on it, my HRM actually gave me a number 20% higher. So who knows.
  • juggernaut1974
    juggernaut1974 Posts: 6,212 Member
    edited February 2016
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    Ultimately - you'll need to use trial and error to determine how accurate they are.

    Frankly, they seem quite high to me. I usually figure about 50-60 calories per mile walking, and about double that running. Now of course, those numbers aren't universal truths for all, so your numbers may be somewhat higher or lower. But using those, that would result in a burn of roughly half of the number of calories the machine gave you.

    Go with it if you want, but re-assess after a few weeks. If your weight loss is significantly slower than expected, that's the likely culprit.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    demo_man wrote: »
    Pretty accurate if the information is input correctly. Seems a little on the high side though. I suggest ditching the treadmill for the elliptical. It's way more efficient in burning calories.

    The elliptical's numbers are way inflated though!

    I do treadmill to work my calves/hamstrings with incline walking... rest of the time it's bike at home (or rowing at the gym) and my quads get plenty of work.
  • dolliesdaughter
    dolliesdaughter Posts: 544 Member
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    I would say get a heart rate monitor. I don't put much faith into the machine caloric burn.
  • skysiebaby
    skysiebaby Posts: 88 Member
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    I concur with what others have said that 740 sounds very high for an hours exercise of what you've described, the best option is to get a heart rate monitor for steady state cardio as although they're not 100% it will be much more accurate than any machine or calculator. I'm 160lb and burn around 630 cals for an hours running at just over 5mph.
  • Domicinator
    Domicinator Posts: 261 Member
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    Our old elliptical usually registered about double the amount of calorie burn that my Apple Watch would tell me and its built in heart rate sensors were always way off the charts. I got rid of that machine because it was hurting my back and replaced it with an Airdyne AD-6. It usually calculates within 10 calories of what my Apple Watch is reading. I think the newer machines are just a lot better at it now.
  • blues4miles
    blues4miles Posts: 1,481 Member
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    3dogsrunning wrote: »
    10 calories a minute is the high end of what is sustainable for the average person.

    The walking pace is slow, although the incline will crank up the effort. However, at the OP's weight, we are talking the same effort as OP running about 5 miles in the same time frame.

    I agree with this for the most part. I would use 10 calories/minute as the absolute max. So 600 calories per hour as the max estimate.

    3.5 mph is pretty darn fast for me, so it's hard to say what kind of effort it was for the OP. I'd put the minimum at 100 calories / mile, but in my experience obese/overweight folks who are new-ish to exercise will burn more than that (closer to the 10/minute).
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Worth a read - HRMs are not the all knowing devices people often believe....

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/exercise-calories-sometimes-the-cardio-machines-are-more-accurate-404739
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    sijomial wrote: »
    Worth a read - HRMs are not the all knowing devices people often believe....

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/exercise-calories-sometimes-the-cardio-machines-are-more-accurate-404739

    Another reason I went with TDEE and none of that eating back random exercise calories nonsense.
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
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    sijomial wrote: »
    Worth a read - HRMs are not the all knowing devices people often believe....

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/exercise-calories-sometimes-the-cardio-machines-are-more-accurate-404739

    This is a good post. It matches with my experience fairly well. To wit: you can get a pretty good estimate of your exercise calories if you know what you are doing and are careful about it.
  • jeepinshawn
    jeepinshawn Posts: 642 Member
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    I burn about 13-13.7 cals per minute running on flat ground at 6mph....
  • SisterSueGetsFit
    SisterSueGetsFit Posts: 1,211 Member
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    gia07 wrote: »
    I personally always give machines a 25% margin of error especially when choosing to eat back calories burned from machines.

    It seems a little high to me, 3.5 is a very slow walking pace for me on the treadmill.

    At 3.5 I'm almost running...you must have very long legs.
  • blues4miles
    blues4miles Posts: 1,481 Member
    edited February 2016
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    sijomial wrote: »
    Worth a read - HRMs are not the all knowing devices people often believe....

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/exercise-calories-sometimes-the-cardio-machines-are-more-accurate-404739

    Thanks for posting this. I was just pondering the accuracy of my HRM (Garmin). My spreadsheet where I enter in all my food and exercise (after entering into MFP) says I should have lost another 1-3 lbs if my TDEE/BMR are what the calculators say they are. I was almost point-on in January with actual weight loss versus the math. Since then I've been working out more. So I began to wonder if I was overcounting my exercise (I eat based on TDEE - 20% so eating exercise isn't the problem, just how much to count). Like on my last run it took me 50 minutes to run 3.2 miles (yes I am slow!) with an average heart rate of 154. It gave me 496 calories for that. My age-graded max should be 189 but my actual might be more like 195 or 198 or so. I am obese and new at it, so it makes some sense it would be a little high but I still worry it's counting too much. I've decided to only count 90% of what it gives me for calorie burn and see if that makes the numbers add up better. I've also decided to take 80% of what MFP thinks my walks take. Like today I walked 3 miles in about 70 minutes, 2.56 mph. So I plug that into MFP and it gave me 308. So I modified the calorie count to be only 246. Hoping this makes things line up again. Obviously the problem could be in my food logging as well, but the way the numbers work now basically ALL of my weight loss is from my exercise and I'm not sure that's accurate.

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