Treadmill vs. Elliptical

your diet is going to have far more to do with weight management than whether or not you're using an elliptical or treadmill. a nice bi-product of regular exercise is increased calorie requisites which makes weight management easier...but it certainly isn't the reason for exercise. if exercise was for weightloss, nobody maintaining would exercise...

I ride a good 60 - 80 miles per week, cross-train with a 5K or some interval running once per week..lift 2-3x per week...do some hiking and swimming here and there...walk my dog and otherwise remain pretty active outside of my office. I've done the above and lost weight, maintained weight, and gained weight...the difference between those three weight management objectives had zero to do with exercise and everything to do with how much I was eating.

diet for weight control; exercise for fitness.

as exercise goes, you should find things that you enjoy doing...because you should be doing them pretty much forever, regardless of weight management objectives.

The amount of calories you burn doing cardio will depend on your intensity, duration and weight. Not on the machine you are using. Whilsy the most importnat element is controlling the amount of consumption the calorie b burns from exercise can help with weight loss depending on the final result of the deficit, whih in turn depends on how much exercise you do.

To give you some perspective Jogging on a treadmill for 60 mins per week you are looking at 300-500 calories, which is going to take you a long time to burn the 3500 cals needed for 1lb of fat. The piece of cardio thats closest to all body exercise is the rower.

Elipticle usually works arms too.....more potential for caloric burn.

Before I started running, I found that I burned more calories on the elliptical. Now that I run, it's outdoors mostly for me (except when I want to take the pressure of my legs and I go back indoors). An elliptical burns more calories for me at a lower perceived level of effort than walking on a treadmill incline.

I do both! During the winter I did the elliptical for an hour and then ran on treadmill 2-3 miles; once the weather became nice I continued with the elliptical & ran outside a lot more (8-10 miles). I play tennis and other activities so I don't become too bored - nice to have options and mix it up.

I just saw this post is really old. Derp. Don't mind me. But, I left my reply anyway.

I think maybe you just haven't gotten comfortable enough with the treadmill and aren't pushing yourself hard enough and that's why your calorie burn is low. Theoretically, you should be able to burn the same number of calories as long as you're working as hard on each machine. If you have a heart rate tracker like a Fitbit, you could use that to get a more apples to apples comparison of your calorie burn. You may find you're not pushing yourself hard enough on the treadmill if your heart rate doesn't hit the same level as it does on the elliptical. I used to use an elliptical and now I have a treadmill. I liked the workout with the elliptical, but I started to get concerned about my bone density, so I decided I would try a harder impact machine to help with that. I don't like to jog because it's jarring, so I do intervals and really make use of the incline on the treadmill to torch calories. If possible, I would alternate between the two machines to get the benefits while minimizing the chance for injury.