Is my pedometer correct?

According to my pedometer

• I walked 6687 steps
• in a distance of 3.6 miles
• in about an 1hr 30 mins including a few steps and a couple of hills.
• and burnt 617 calories

Does this sound right to you?  I'm 5'5", 35yrs old 215lbs. 

calorie burn is always an estimate.  617 sounds high to me, but it could be close.

in 90 minutes, my pedo would tell me that i've walked between 9,000 and 10,000 steps, and in that time i walk 7-8 kms (approx. 4-5 miles).  that doesn't mean that yours isn't accurate; i walk pretty fast. 

to measure distance, i use the path tool in google earth.  there are other sites (mapmyrun.com is popular), but google earth shows trails as well as roads.

the most important thing is that you were moving for 90 minutes; i wouldn't worry too much about the rest .

edited to clarify: my pedo came out of a cereal box.  it seems to count more accurately than another that i had and threw out, but it's questionable.  but i know the distance i noted is accurate.

I bought a fairly decent pedometre and I certainly don't rely on it......it may be that its not calibrated correctly but when I track distance on a treadmill, by using a map or by running a track and see what my pedometre says, or distance some other way, the pedometre always says far less (like 3 mile difference for my 7 mile run last week).....I don't think its very good for tracking running movement.

Its good for seeing where you improve.  I would track your steps, distance, calorie burn and minutes somewhere so you can see an actual improvement.  The point is to do a little more each day.

I use runningmap.com to measure my outdoor distance.

That's sounds pretty close to me.  I usually burn about 200 cals on my pedometer for walking about 30 minutes at an average of 3.3-3.5 mph.

Pedometers can certainy have their quirks.  I discovered today that mine does not measure distance accurately. 

The measurement that your pedometer is certainly measuring accurately is the steps.  On average there are about 2000 steps in a mile.  So 3.6 miles would be about right.

However, your calorie count sounds really high.  At 3.6 miles in 90 minutes is about 2.5 miles per hour.  CC counts 2.5 miles per hour as 200 calories.  So your burn would be 300ish.

CCs calorie counts on most activities is pretty close to other sites.  I am very inclined to say that 300 calories is accurate.

I'm more concerned about the calories burnt.  When I log walking on C-C for the same time it said around 400 cals burnt.  At the moment I have 1000 cal deficit, but if I only burnt 400 I'll have less of a deficit.  If I'm going to be doing this most days I don't want to be out by that much.

2,000 steps = roughly 1 mile... 10,000 steps = roughly 5 miles. 

What brand pedometer do you have? I used to wear one constantly... it was a digiwalker... Super accurate and these days they are a lot more advance! Google them if you're interested. 

Original Post by madamq:

However, your calorie count sounds really high.  At 3.6 miles in 90 minutes is about 2.5 miles per hour.  CC counts 2.5 miles per hour as 200 calories.  So your burn would be 300ish.

 

CC's calorie counts factor in the weight and gender of the individual.  You and closetdieter don't necessarily burn the same number of calories doing the same type of exercise. 

Also, keep in mind that those 600ish calories *include* the calories you would have burned if you'd sat on the couch instead of walking.  If you got a burn of 600ish for walking 90 minutes, I'd estimate that that included about 150-200 calories of 'just existing' so will only give you a 'real' burn of 400-450 calories.  (CC will factor that in when you enter the exercise; you'll notice the burn meter doesn't go up by the full 600 - but, if you're keeping track on your own, it's important to know so you can factor it in.)

Thanks for everyone's replies.  My pedometer is one on my mobile phone, but I have decided to buy one and I'll see what figures that gives me for the same distance.

Original Post by closetdieter:

According to my pedometer

• I walked 6687 steps
• in a distance of 3.6 miles
• in about an 1hr 30 mins including a few steps and a couple of hills.
• and burnt 617 calories

Does this sound right to you?  I'm 5'5", 35yrs old 215lbs. 

at 215, it's quite likely you burn 600 cals in 90 minutes of walking at the pace you mention. When I was 210, I would have burned about that many cals going 3.6 miles, according to my HRM. I know my HRM was correct because I lost weight at the rate I expected, given what I was tracking.

Keep tracking, relying on the pedometer info. If you find you are losing at the rate you expect (give it 4 weeks), you'll know you have the numbers right. If not, then you will have to figure out why the numbers "aren't adding up" correctly. Usually, that's due to not measuring everything one eats, but it could be an over- or under-estimate of cals burned through exercise.

I'm about 195 today and burn about 10 cals/minute with moderate exercise--keeping my heart rate at about 65% of my aerobic level. You were burning about 6.6 cals/minute (600/90). for someone your weight, that sounds about right, given your pace.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks, on_my_way for the runningmap.com link.