Question for those who may know the answer

[tanabanana92207]

I belong to a gym and on the particular treadmills they have, there is a read-out of calories burned, distance traveled etc. How accurate are those readings? When you program the machine, it asks for your weight so it does take that into account. I'm just wondering how far I can rely on those readings when calculating my daily caloric intakes and expenditures.

[tman666]

They are not very accurate. The only way they are useful is for tracking how much "effort" you expended during the workout, which could help you put a number on your training progression.

 

Using the number within the context of a daily BMR+Activity calculation would be unwise, in my opinion.

[tanabanana92207]

So if it tells me that I'm burning 600 calories an hour walking at a 3.5 mph pace doing an interval hill program, I can safely assume that calculation is way off or would it be a decent approximation? I know that I am exerting myself as my heart rate is averaging about 151 bpm, but it would be nice to know an approximate calorie total for the workout.

[tman666]

So if it tells me that I'm burning 600 calories an hour walking at a 3.5 mph pace doing an interval hill program, I can safely assume that calculation is way off or would it be a decent approximation? I know that I am exerting myself as my heart rate is averaging about 151 bpm, but it would be nice to know an approximate calorie total for the workout.

 

I would actually take the heart rate average for a more accurate calorie calculation. I'm not sure of the calculation (I would look for 3-4 formulas to take the average result of), but I'm sure that unless you've pre-programmed the treadmill with your height, weight, bodyfat percentage (which can be a crap-shoot in and of itself), etc., that the calorie counter on the treadmill is probably not overly accurate.

 

Check this out:

 

http://running.about.com/od/treadmillrunning/f/treadmillcaloriecounter.htm

[tanabanana92207]

Thanks for your comments by the way. I have actually programmed the treadmill with my height and weight and I enter the mph goal, the hill intensity and the length of time. It doesn't allow for body fat programming.