Apple Watch exercise

Pittgirl3
Pittgirl3 Posts: 69 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hey guys,
So I have an Apple Watch and I’m curious if anyone else feels like their watch doesn’t accurately count their exercise calories. I’ve been working out on my NordiTrack treadmill for 40 mins with an average speed of 3.0 (min. 2.5/max 3.5). I go super hard. I’m drenched in sweat afterwards. I take very few breaks, just long enough to take a sip of water. And after all of this... my watch has the absolute nerve to say that I’ve only burned a little over 200 calories. :s

This is very disheartening to me because I try to burn at least 10 cals a min. The treadmill reports around 350 burned, but I know those can be inaccurate.

Does anyone else have this issue with their watch? If not, am I doing something wrong?

Replies

  • L1zardQueen
    L1zardQueen Posts: 8,753 Member
    My Apple Watch is okay for me. Drenched in sweat is not indication of calories burned. I used to take lots of spin classes before COVID hit us and my watch gave me On average 450 calories burnt for a one hour class. I lost weight accordingly.
  • vjles
    vjles Posts: 91 Member
    edited July 2020
    Calories can be deceiving depending on which measurement you want to believe. Your height, weight, gender & age can affect how calories are counted. I have MyFitnessPal connected directly to the Health App in my iPhone, so, if I change my weight in MFP, it is reflected in the iPhone/Apple Watch. I record my walks/runs on both my Apple Watch and Strava on my iPhone. For instance, I did a 7-mile walk last night (2hrs 37mins) and Strava recorded 1,550 calories burned, the Apple Watch/iPhone showed 1,361 calories, BUT, 1,005 ACTIVE calories. I always use the ACTIVE calories from the Apple Watch/iPhone to record in MFP as I don't want to con myself and overeat calories. ;-)
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,927 Member
    What is the average speed of 3? 3 miles per hour? 3 minutes per mile seems unlikely. 3 miles per hour is nearly normal walking, thus I'd not expect a lot of calories to be burned there. If you're running you could check with miles * weight in lbs * 0.63 (and 0.3 for walking). Just as a note: sweating has not really much of a correlation with effort as everyones tolerance is different, plus room temperature, humidity and other things that don't really influence calorie burns.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Pittgirl3 wrote: »
    Hey guys,
    So I have an Apple Watch and I’m curious if anyone else feels like their watch doesn’t accurately count their exercise calories. I’ve been working out on my NordiTrack treadmill for 40 mins with an average speed of 3.0 (min. 2.5/max 3.5). I go super hard. I’m drenched in sweat afterwards. I take very few breaks, just long enough to take a sip of water. And after all of this... my watch has the absolute nerve to say that I’ve only burned a little over 200 calories. :s

    This is very disheartening to me because I try to burn at least 10 cals a min. The treadmill reports around 350 burned, but I know those can be inaccurate.

    Does anyone else have this issue with their watch? If not, am I doing something wrong?

    Besides the great advice above about 3 mph not being that fast nor huge calorie burn - I think there is also a difference between what is being shown.

    Treadmill, if it has your weight, could be decent estimate, since formula can be very accurate.
    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs (use the Gross option to compare to treadmill)

    But the treadmill like most machines & databases is giving a total burn for that chunk of time - how much did your body likely burn during this 40 min.

    Your Apple monitoring though has a base calories based on Sedentary, so they report what you have burned above and beyond that for any time - non-exercise moving calories, and exercise.

    So for them the walk was above and beyond Sedentary (which is BMR x about 1.25 per day, math it out per min, add to the walk calories, may be close to the same)

    So it's saying you burned 200 extra calories to the day over the sedentary it was expecting I'm pretty sure.
    The treadmill, MFP or any other database, are reporting what you burned for 40 min in total.
  • Pittgirl3
    Pittgirl3 Posts: 69 Member
    Wow all this was majorly helpful. Thanks guys.

    As for the speed, that’s why I gave my min and max so you can see the variation in speeds. I also forgot to mention that I’m usually doing variable inclines. But the tips as far as how the Apple Watch calculates calories burned was very helpful. Guess I have to take things up a notch if I want to lose this weight.

    I sincerely miss going to the gym and getting my cardio in. It seems like it was soo much easier there than at home.

    Thanks again for your responses.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Pittgirl3 wrote: »
    Guess I have to take things up a notch if I want to lose this weight.

    That may be a misunderstanding too.

    Exercise is for heart health and body shaping.

    Diet for what you eat is to take in less than you burn to lose fat weight.

    So if by taking it up a notch you mean logging with more accuracy what you eat and confirming you come in 500 or 250 or whatever below what you burn - yes.

    If you mean exercise more - you got the wrong idea.

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