Can I trust the gym equipment?

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ajc1309
ajc1309 Posts: 255 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've finally started going to the gym as one has opened up 2 mins from where I work. It has equipment there that I can connect my phone to and it counts the time I do on each machine and the calories I burned. Today I did about an hour at the gym and it's put me at burning 426 cals. Can I trust this?

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  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    Gym equipment is notorious for over-estimating calorie burns for many people.
  • ajc1309
    ajc1309 Posts: 255 Member
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    Is there any accurate way of estimating what I burn then? MFP also WAY over-estimates calorie burn, a lot more than the equipment.
  • Luna3386
    Luna3386 Posts: 888 Member
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    Start by eating half and monitor your weight, if you are losing at your projected amount then you are estimating right. Not losing enough? You are overestimating. Losing more? Underestimating.

    Every thing is only an estimation anyways.
  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
    edited July 2017
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    I was told that the gym equipment estimates the burn based on the user being 150 lbs. If you weigh more than that, you're likely burning more. If you weigh less, then the reverse. As to how much (percentage), I'm not sure.

    My n=1: I use a fitness glider. Since it's not in the MFP database, and since I was initially under the impression that I had a ski machine somehow, I entered that, discovered that MFP's estimate of the burn was roughly 10% higher than the glider, and overrode their total with what I got off the machine. As I've lost weight (I'm now just over 185), I'm noticing that my estimated burns from MFP are coming closer to what the glider is telling me. Probably about 6% higher now. I'm waiting to see, but I have a suspicion that when I hit 150, the two totals are going to be just about even. IF that happens, then as I get below 150, I'll use the MFP numbers.

    (All the same, I know a glider isn't a ski machine, so I'm likely using incorrect data anyhow. One of the reasons I try to eat back 50% of my exercise calories.)
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    ajc1309 wrote: »
    I've finally started going to the gym as one has opened up 2 mins from where I work. It has equipment there that I can connect my phone to and it counts the time I do on each machine and the calories I burned. Today I did about an hour at the gym and it's put me at burning 426 cals. Can I trust this?

    Depends on the equipment...my gym has some pretty nice stuff that is fairly new and it's a small private studio, so the stuff doesn't get beat up...I can put in my age and weight, etc and I've found the bike at least to be reasonably accurate.

    You just have to remember that nothing is totally accurate...that's pretty well impossible without being hooked up to thousands of dollars in equipment...it's all an estimate. Many people start by eating back some arbitrary portion of their exercise calories. I always just used my HRM and subtracted the calories that I otherwise would have burned doing nothing and never had any issues...was it accurate? IDK...it was accurate enough.
  • dfwesq
    dfwesq Posts: 592 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Gym equipment is notorious for over-estimating calorie burns for many people.
    I think that's probably true. Even the equipment where you enter your age, weight, etc. there is bound to be some variation. The manufacturers who decide how their equipment is going to be programmed have every motive to estimate at the high end of that range rather than the low end.

    That said, 426 calories for an hour of aerobic exercise sounds about right, depending on how much you weigh and how vigorously you exercised.
  • MiViVe
    MiViVe Posts: 13 Member
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    If the machine doesn't have an option to input your weight and you aren't putting your hands on the heart rate monitor constantly the data is pretty useless. And even if you do this, it's still not accurate.

    A fitness watch/band is the most accurate way, especially one that easily connects to whatever health service you use (MFP, Apple Health, whatever). But again, they are just using calculations and algorithms. Only your body knows how much you burned.
  • DX2JX2
    DX2JX2 Posts: 1,921 Member
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    If you had a moderately intense session (average hr at 70ish % of max), then 400 calories for an hour of work actually doesn't sound that unreasonable. The machine count might be slightly high but it shouldn't be that far off.

    In general though yes the machines tend to provide inflated calorie burn numbers. The machine I use can be high by as much as 35% vs my fitness tracker.

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