Am I burning as many calories as the machine says I am?

Okay,

Trying to lose 20 more pounds.

Work out 4-5 days a week.

Variety of workouts: Eliptical, running, aerobics, kickboxing, swimming...

Question:

How can I get the most accurate calculation of the amount of calories burned in a given workout? 

Also, The eliptical says I burn about 400 cals per half hour and the treadmill says I burn about 200 per half hour, but I feel like I'm sweating and working harder on the treadmill. 

Is running on the treadmill working harder and not smarter, or does it depend on the body? Because I sweat my ass off trying to run in half the time I'm on the eliptical.

Thanks,
MJ

Calorie burn counts on gym machines are notoriously inaccurate.  If you're doing an hour most days of something fairly strenuous chalk it up as 'moderate' activity and use that as a good average.

You ask a tricky question that most people on this website wish they knew the answer to!

Really the only way to get accurate calorie outputs while exercising is if you are in a lab hooked up to machines measuring all kinds of things. This is not exactly practical or even feasible for most of us.

Different people will have different efficiencies on various forms of exercise. So please only take the calories on the machines as a suggestion and not necessarily fact. The machine is likely to be more accurate if you have to enter information like age & weight before you begin.

I am the same as you - I find running on the tredmill way more tiring than the ellipticals. But maybe that is because I work out on the elliptical more often and therefore my body feels more efficient at it.

You will have people suggest a heart rate monitor for the most accurate calorie burn readings - but even this is only an estimation based on your heart rate and the activity you are performing.

For me - I go online and get a variety of sources and take an average. Keep up the variety of cardio workouts though - it is good to have the variety the 'mix  up' helps keep your body on its toes and hopefully that will mean burning more!

Sorry I didn't have a concrete answer for you. I wish I had one too! 

I was wondering the same thing 2 weeks ago. I used to run for 35 minutes on the treadmill at various speeds. I logged in my time with the different speeds on CC and it gave me about the same amount of calories burned (310 on the machine and 305 on CC). So as far as I'm concerned I think the machine is pretty accurate when you log in your weight.

The best thing would be to buy those calories counter that you stick on yourself... that way, you would be sure of the amount.

You are all very helpful. I couldn't have lost the 10 pounds I already have without CC or you.

All of you had great suggesstions.  I will definetly try to take an average just to make sure.  I guess it wouldn't hurt to get a calorie/heart rate moniter just in case to add to the averages I get with the Machine, CC and other internet sources to get a better idea of what I've burned.

I will definetly remember that all the numbers are not fact and just used as an estimate.

If you folks hear of anything more accurate, let me know.

Thanks again,

MJ

Also, The eliptical says I burn about 400 cals per half hour and the treadmill says I burn about 200 per half hour, but I feel like I'm sweating and working harder on the treadmill. 

 

The machines say about the same for me too. They ask for my weight, and also measure my heartrate though. I've always thought it quite accurate...

My elliptical says I burn over 900 cals on the toughest workout setting. When I wore a heart monitor and input my information, it said I burned more like 450. Yikes! So I don't trust it at all anymore.

My elliptical says I burn 1/2 of what CC tells me for light effort.  I just go with the lower # (my machine, not CC).

I've struggled with the same problem as a long distance runner. Most people and sources say that (while running or walking) you burn about 100 calories per mile. But sometimes I run very slow (if doing over 10 miles) and sometimes I try to run pretty fast, so needed to have something that was a little more accurate. My HR monitor doesn't have a calorie function, but it does give me my average HR over the duration of a workout, if I use the stopwatch function. I've recently started entering this information into a formula that just uses the average HR, total time, my age, weight, and sex, and then gives me calories burned. I've been losing weight as I have adjusted my caloric intake to match this, so I assume that it is reasonably accurate. For example, after running for 1:55 hours, with an average HR of about 156, I burned 1113 calories. This seems far more likely than the 2500 or so calories that I would "burn" on the treadmill. Just my take on it...

Original Post by sanguinepenguin:

I've recently started entering this information into a formula that just uses the average HR, total time, my age, weight, and sex, and then gives me calories burned. I've been losing weight as I have adjusted my caloric intake to match this, so I assume that it is reasonably accurate.

 Wow! Where can I find the formula or site to try it out myself?

http://www.triathlontrainingblog.com/?page_id =483 claims to calculate calories burned based on heart rate and stats.

http://www.braydenwm.com/calburn.htm

This is the site I use. Haven't tried the triathlon one; I'll check it out.

OK, here's what I found. On the Brayden website, for 3 hours and 14 minutes of running with an average HR of 155, it tells me I burned 1860 calories. I am 28 years old, I weigh 189 lbs, I'm female, and I don't know my VO2Max so entered zero in that field. On the triathlon website mentioned above, with the same stats, it tells me I burned 2866 calories. While I wish that were correct, but I think the Brayden one is closer to the truth.

I think the reason for the disparity between the two sites is this note on the triathlon site:

After a comment from a reader, I made the following change for Women without VO2max: changed “- 0.1263 x weight” to “+ 0.1263 x weight”. The reader noticed that calories burned went down with increasing weight. But that doesn’t make sense. So I compared the numbers to the men’s formula, and I think that should be a plus.
The original page I got the formula from is here. Now it seems like it’s calculating too many calories for me, but oh well…

So on one hand, the triathlon site site definitely seems to overestimate, but on the other hand, the other site gives a result that as your weight decreases, your burn increases, which we know shouldn't happen.

Which goes to show that everything is an estimate.

That is interesting. I did go back to the site that I've been using (Brayden) and entered 165 for my weight. Sure enough, I "burned" about 100 or so more calories, even using the same information as before. That's not significantly off, but it does make me wonder. I've tried a few different sites in the past days and they're all over the place in terms of total calories burned. So I'm gonna stick with the lowest total and go from there. Better to underestimate than overestimate.