I’ve been told the calorie counters on gym cardio machines are usually way off. If I do 60 minutes on a cross-trainer at, say, one of the medium resistance levels, what is the best way to work out how many calories I’ve burned? Cheers.
To get the most accurate reading (with over the counter, affordable devices), you’d need a heart rate monitor with a chest strap. Failing that, you can probably get some sort of approximation if you are entering your weight in to the machine - you’ll get a better approximation if the machine is calculating based on your power output (combined with weight).
Aside from that, online calculators won’t be any more accurate then the machine.
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This is more of an advice/opinion sort of thing than a factual question.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion (IMHO).
Is it useful to try and estimate calories burned? Aren’t there more useful/meaningful ways to set your exercise milestones?
ETA: Especially given the difficulty in accurate measurement or even meaningful estimation of the value, I mean. I suppose if you could measure calorie burn as accurately as time or weight, it would help. But for the average person on the average workout floor, it’s just an estimation and setting goals by time and effort would be more reasonable. At least, I’ve always found it so. The calorie crowd always seems a little… obsessed, as if absurdly exact numbers and calculations were of benefit.
Well, if for whatever reason you did want to know you could use the heart rate as above and plug it into an on-line calculator like this one.
Alternatively you could use an on-line calculator to figure out your basal metabolic rate (calories burned at rest), convert that into a rate per minute or per hour, and then multiply that by the METS for the activity you are doing per a table like this … Doing that give me an estimated baseline of just over 1 kCal/min at rest and 10 while running a ten minute mile (METs of 10), 100/10 min, 600/hr, 540 net over baseline. The heart rate calculator approach says that would be my burn rate at a heart rate of 115. I don’t usually check but I am breathing hard enough to not have comfortable conversations at that pace but can say a few words in a row. Sounds reasonable.
I’m with AB above - it seems simpler to just go by intensity of effort.
I’ve done quite a few internet searches on this question. I haven’t tried it myself, but I think the most accurate way to go about doing it is to (1) buy a top of the line heart rate monitor which estimates calories burned; and (2) periodically calibrate your interpretation of the heart rate monitor at a sports laboratory.
Keep in mind that if your fitness level changes, it can affect the estimate of the heart rate monitor.
Another approach, if you happen to be dieting, is to keep very careful track of your weight and the amount of calories you consume. If, for example, you keep eating the same diet every day but go from 30 to 60 minutes on the machine, you can look at the change of slope on your weight loss graph and estimate the net additional calories you are burning.
I think that for some people, it is. For example if you are exercising for fitness but not weight loss, it may be helpful to try to balance out your exercise with extra eating. Even if you are exercising for weight loss, you probably want to make sure that your daily energy deficit is not too great.
Of course, you might respond that people can go by feel and intuition. The trouble with this approach is that for a lot of people, feel and intuition are likely to get them in a lot of trouble when it comes to diet and exercise.
I think there’s a lot of potential benefit from precise calculations. As I alluded to above, when it comes to diet and exercise it’s very easy to fool yourself into overeating. Having a very bright line, even if that line is somewhat arbitrary, can be very helpful.
Except that the assumptions made are crazy ass imprecise.
Changes in BMR and more so, non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), are both huge wild cards on the calories burned side in response to both weight loss and exercise. Excess post-oxygen consumption (EPOC) also albeit less so. The rest of the day’s calories out is not a static figure uneffected by exercise and diet. Estimates of caloric intake are rarely super accurate either.
Exercising fairly hard for nearly an hour I may have actually burned 500 kCal net above baseline or maybe I am off by 20% and burned 600 or 400 net above. Boy, max off accepting that big spread and that level of intensity and time is 200 kCal in a day - swamped by these other factors easily. If I am exerciing more moderately for just half an hour we are talking maybe 120 with a +/- of 20 to 30 kCal either way.
Worrying about that, going to a sports lab to caibrate your top line heart monitor is not obsessive at all!
Doctor_Why_Bother,
Out of curiosity, why do you care to know with any precision? What are you trying to accomplish with your exercise and how to you think knowing whether or not you burned 300 or 500 calories in that hour as a true number (rather than as a relative measure compared to other work-outs on that machine) helps you meet your goal better?
My main goal is just to lose a bit of weight and improve my aerobic fitness and stamina. I don’t really care about getting things exactly right, but I’d heard those machines were wildly inaccurate, often to the tune of several hundred calories in either direction per session. I’m really something of a neophyte when it comes to all this. I just figured it’d be best to know how many calories I’d burn on, say, an hour on a cross trainer, with a reasonable degree of accuracy so I could plan my diet a bit better. Thanks for all your responses so far. Interesting stuff.
The best that I can tell is that many machines direct tie “calories” to the time or distance run on a machine (I only use treadmills/elliptical). Thus it matters not if you do an intense or mild exercise - for a given time or distance the calories will be the same.
I’ve used online calorie calculators that let you estimate the intensity in addition to the time spent and weight which should give you a better estimate.
Here’s a nice exerise calorie calculator! No idea if it is accurate and have my doubts as it seems to way undercall intense rowing. (I’ve read the studies.) But still.
It gives me higher number for my hour run of 6 miles than my above calculation does and credits me for 749 (which would come to about 690 net above resting). Much more than my METs method result of 600 (540 net above baseline). That heart rate calculator would only credit me for that if I maintained a HR of about 135, which again I do not usually check. Maybe I’ll do next run I’ll remember to check and see which one is more consistent. It’s in the name of science after all!
Again, I’d use intensity as a best rough guide. Figure maybe 70ish/10 minutes for moderate, 100ish/10 minutes for upper level sustained aerobic range and to 180 to maybe even 200/10 minutes for all out intensity and interpolate from there. But those are WAGs not exercise lab verified results.
brazil84, how does your preceived effort correlate with calories out when you do the lab?
Heart rate was about 140 at that level of intensity FWIW.
The best way to do it is to shout "ONE calorie, ah ah ah! TWO calories, ah ah ah! THREE … " and by that time you’ll probably have been asked to cut it out. But it’s fun while it lasts.
I’d say to skip the calorie counting in the gym; it’s only going to discourage you when you bust your ass for 45 minutes of biking or elliptical and find out you only burned like 100 calories.
Better to watch your dietary calories and exercise; it’s not the exercise that’s going to make you lose weight anyway, but the caloric restriction in your diet.