Can you go by the calories read on the exercise machines?

Just curious as to if the machine's at the gym are accurate. The elliptical I was on did ask for my weight and age, but not my height.

Should I just type in what the machine said it was or just make an estimate with the activity browser here on CC?

Thanks! :)

the calories are by and large inaccurate but if you use the same machine every time then it doesn't really matter because you can compare your "burn" on different days to one another and adjust accordingly since it would be consistently off. So consistency is more important than absolute truths.

Original Post by silentdeadlyrose:

Just curious as to if the machine's at the gym are accurate. The elliptical I was on did ask for my weight and age, but not my height.

Should I just type in what the machine said it was or just make an estimate with the activity browser here on CC?

Thanks! :)

 NO.

I'm 34. After taking regular -every 3-4 mos - field MHR..my age on my HRM is 15 yrs.

They in no way able to know a person's fitness level. They are going on weight and age...and even with that..it's so general. For most people, the read outs give a much bigger cal burn.

I always input what the machines tell me into CC, and I've never had a problem.

I honestly think that both tools (either the machines or using CC's numbers) give you a general estimate, anyway, so I'd rather go with the one that was actually measuring me as I exercised.

It's a good reminder to just stay balanced, and we'll be fine. :)

Some are, some aren't. Treadmills will tend to be fairly accurate because they use established prediction formulas to estimate energy expenditure. The only problem is that, because of the lack of wind resistance, they will overestimate calorie expenditure by a modest amount at running speeds. If you are running, check the calorie expenditure at 0% incline--that is the best estimate, but you have to run with a 1% incline to actually work at that number. Hopefully that makes sense.

Other machines, such as bikes and stairclimbers, if they are manufactured by top-level companies such as Life Fitness, calibrate their workloads pretty well, so calorie readouts on those machines should be more accurate.

Ellipticals and cross trainers are the most suspect, because there is no standard defined movement on which to base research. So, you are at the mercy of the integrity or practices of the manufacturer. Since 2005 or so, Life Fitness has done validation testing every time a new cardio machine was introduced. Their calorie algorithms are machine-specific. There are still normal standards of error, but that is true of any method (including HRMs). Most other manufacturers use a more general method, or extrapolate data from another type of exercise, or rely on original studies that were done on a previous model. So, those are the machines (and anything else) that are the most untrustworthy.