How Accurate Are Gym Machine's Calorie Count?

R

RyanB72

New member
Hey everyone, this is something I've always been curious about...

Are the machine pretty much close to what your actual caloric output is or not?


For instance, I'm 27, 6'0 and weigh 203LBS


I'll use this eliptical type machine at the gym on incline 4 and resistance 40, put in my weight, and do 40 minutes.

And the output will be around 650 calories.


Then I'll do 20 minutes on the treadmill, holding on to the bars, at incline 8 and 4.5MPH

And the output will be around 310


So, doing this, it's saying I'm burning around 1,000 calories a day.

That's always seemed a bit steep, but aside from buying something I have no idea. Does that sound right at all?
 
I put your info into this calculator... http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/calories-burned . The only option was for level ground, but for the 20 minutes on the treadmill at 4.5 mph, it gave about a 215 calorie expenditure. With the incline set at 8, it could definitely be higher than that. Not sure about the accuracy, but just keep in mind that all of these calculations are estimates. Do you know someone with a heart rate monitor or body bugg type system that you could borrow? That might help you get a more accurate measurement of calories burned.
 
I'm pretty sure that they are generally considered inaccurate, and often they give too high numbers. There are too many things that can like... change the actual number like leaning onto handles, your angle of body, how you do the movement etc. I wouldn't trust it for anything else than comparing your workout from one day to the other on the same machine. For calculating like "Ooooh I can eat this much now" then no, they're not trustworthy at all.
 
Those calorie estimates are really robust. Those are basing on average values of large population. If you took a large sample population, let say 1000 people, you will get a quite good accuracy. But when you are trying to predict calories burned by single person, your accuracy is very poor. My recommendation is that you will not trust to these numbers. Those are developed only to sell those machines.


If you are using the same machine in every exercise, then you will get an idea of your trend. But if you are using several different machines, you cannot compare your numbers provided by different machine.


Summary: those calorie estimates give you robust estimation, but those are not exact truth.
 
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