gym calories

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Jessicaruby
Jessicaruby Posts: 881 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
when working out do you manually enter your calories the machine at the gym gave you into MFP or do you use the MFP suggestions?

Replies

  • timeforachange2011
    timeforachange2011 Posts: 155
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    I bought a heart rate monitor...the machines and MFP are usually WAY higher than what you are actually burning.
  • barbiex3
    barbiex3 Posts: 1,036 Member
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    I bought a heart rate monitor...the machines and MFP are usually WAY higher than what you are actually burning.

    not for me ;)
  • bhagavatilad1
    bhagavatilad1 Posts: 277
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    If you want this tool to work for you I'd use MFP suggestions.
  • papastu
    papastu Posts: 737 Member
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    I bought a heart rate monitor...the machines and MFP are usually WAY higher than what you are actually burning.

    same here, HRM is the only true reading
  • taylorsurf
    taylorsurf Posts: 1
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    Heart rate monitor is the way to go!
  • myachinass
    myachinass Posts: 6
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    I may be wrong, but I usually add in what the machines say. I do the programs that ask for my age and weight, and then use the HR monitors, so they have more personalized information than MFP.
  • LordRahl
    LordRahl Posts: 48 Member
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    Have a HRM that I use for everything but swimming and spinning. I like the accuracy from it compared to some of MFP's estimates. Although for some exercises they are really close.
  • tameko2
    tameko2 Posts: 31,634 Member
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    Use MFP and then ask your friends what they recommend you reduce it by. I have seen people suggest 20% - that seems to apply to certain activities but not to everything. Circuit training comes up as some obscenely high number whereas my HRM puts me in at about 55% of what MFP thinks. I see friends post calories from the elliptical too and those are always crazy high -- unless you have got the resistance up, you're cranking along, and using the arm thingies, its not likely you're burning 900 calories an hour.

    Look for friends with HRMs that do similar exercises and then I'd ask them to help you guesstimate (Assuming you do not want to buy an HRM yourself_)
  • cmpettey
    cmpettey Posts: 223
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    I use the gym's reading because it monitors everything I do. For example, today I walked for 5 min to warm up, 35 min jog, 2 min sprint, 3 min walk to cool down. It's more convenient for me to log the treadmill's calorie reading instead of logging each and every one of my activities. I will get a HRM when my finances are not as tight but for now, I use the gym's calorie reading. I rarely eat all my exercise calories anyway, more like half.
  • killagb
    killagb Posts: 3,280 Member
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    My treadmill was what I used to go by, but now that I go by my Polar FT7 HRM, I am usually showing a good 100+ calories better than the machine does. I'm not complaining :)
  • maidentl
    maidentl Posts: 3,203 Member
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    Ah tameko2, I am so glad you said that. I just started doing some circuit training and when it told me how many calories I supposedly burned I did raise an eyebrow. In fact, i told myself I'd only eat half to be safe so looks like I am about right. Good to know!

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