Are "Calories Burned" Websites Accurate?

peterdt
peterdt Posts: 820 Member
edited December 2024 in Fitness and Exercise
I am wondering what is really accurate for calorie burning guides. Online a few online website

http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc. For example, I do 10 minutes of elliptical at the gym and at my weight of 320 it says I've burned 275 calories, or 27.5 calories per minute. This seem excessive.

At the gym after entering my stats it says I've burned about 140 calories. I'm assuming that is the correct one.

I use the site for other exercises like hiking, basketball and the calories burned estimates all seem way high to me. Any insight out there?

Replies

  • bethfartman
    bethfartman Posts: 363 Member
    There's no way they're accurate. The machines at the gym are not accurate either, I'm sure of that. I normally don't eat back the calories I burn and if I plan to, I take at least 20% off what the website says or about 15-20% off the gym machines estimate. I'd rather err on the possibility of eating too few calories rather than too much.
  • raerae514
    raerae514 Posts: 171 Member
    You need a heart rate monitor so that you can be very accurate when calculating calories burned. Some HRM's will tell you how many calories you burn, others just give you a heart rate. But then you can go online or get an app and enter your weight, age, how long you worked out and what your average heart rate was. Then that will give you the most accurate calories burned.
  • carld256
    carld256 Posts: 855 Member
    I think most calculations are high. I use a treadmill that's calibrated for my current weight, and its numbers are pretty close to what MFP says. I've looked at an online treadmill calculator, and it says that I've burned 780 calories while MFP and the treadmill both say I've burned about 500 for the same exercise. I chose to go with the 500.

    http://42.195km.net/e/treadsim/

    If you're consistently losing weight I don't think it matters too much how accurate the numbers are, but you might want to invest in a heart rate monitor which is supposed to be more accurate.

    Also, given the inaccuracies involved, I'll only eat back a couple hundred of those 500 exercise calories.
  • Qatsi
    Qatsi Posts: 2,191 Member
    If you're consistently losing weight I don't think it matters too much how accurate the numbers are...

    That's pretty much my take on this. I don't stress about whether my net calorie deficit adds up exactly to the number of pounds I've lost. Even if I DID try to calculate everything down to the last calorie, there are other factors involved that could affect the numbers.
This discussion has been closed.

Categories