ShapeFit.com

Pyrettablaze · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 3

I have a question on how to calculate the calories burned during a specific exercise. For instance, this AM I did the weight loss program on our elliptical for 44 minutes. I know that it is not an exact science however, the calorie reader on the machine says that I burned about 280 calories. With that being said, I was surprised to see that when adding the 44 minute elliptical exercise to my tracker, that I had burned about 686 calories. That is a pretty big difference. Why would one differ from the other so much?

swanso5 · Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:49 am Post subject:

the cal counters are no where near correct...how can they predict your resting metabolic rate before you even step on the machine??

just train hard and you'll know yourself if you've burnt cal's or not

DianaB · Joined: 05 Jul 2007 Posts: 714

It's just a number. My elliptical reads at the same rate whether I do steady state, intervals, hill climbs, whatever. Gives me 1 cal burned/minute. And that's a commercial gym quality machine.
Factor your BMR using the Harris Benedict formula, and be sure to add in your activity level. This is the closest you will get to your actual, aside from running controled sports lab tests.
You are going to know if you are burning enough from your belly measurement, it should shrink if you are losing BF.
d.