we've got some bad news you could be
burning fewer calories at the gym than
you think in a study published in 2018
researchers found that some ellipticals
overestimate calories burned by as much
as 130 calories per 30 minutes of
exercise now to put that in perspective
if you ate an extra 130 calories of food
each day you'd put on more than a pound
each month or 13.5 pounds a year and as
it turns out ellipticals aren't the only
machines with imprecise calorie counters
well when you talk about the the
calculations here they are way off
so they are so much off you can't really
use the information meaning that it's
can be more than 50% off now for some
counting calories isn't the point during
it for the other benefits exercise
offers but for the nearly 50% of
Americans who have at some point tried
to lose weight it really does matter and
that's because people might eat more
when they think they're burning more
calories the participants in the the
group that had fitness trackers Fitbit
monitors they actually didn't lose as
much weight as the people that didn't
have anything and one reason to thought
might be that they were overestimated in
terms of energy expenditure so they
allowed themselves to eat more and their
food didn't lose the lose as much weight
now the formula for losing weight may
look simple burn more calories than you
consume but actually measuring calories
isn't at least on your typical exercise
machine a reason it's so difficult to
get the calorie count correct is that
you're not really measuring the calorie
counts so to do that you need to to
measure all the cells in your body and
how much energy they are using but
obviously you're not going to do that so
instead you try to do some other proxies
for that so you might measure the
distance you're traveling or you might
measure your heart rate do you mind
measuring something else the power
output on the elliptical for example
according to Matson it largely comes
down to how well each machine calculates
that power output which is a relatively
reliable proxy for calories
and the more complex a machine is so
Stairmaster and a elliptical is more
complex than a bike the less accurate
the power output will be for one study
researchers compared calorie readouts
for ellipticals stair climbers
stationary bikes and treadmills the
calorie count on ellipticals was off by
42 percent while the other equipment had
a noticeable but smaller margin of error
now entering your weight before working
out is a simple way to increase the
accuracy and that's because different
bodies burn calories at different rates
even if they're doing the same activity
but even if you do there's still plenty
of room for error
for example the machine might not be
well calibrated the power output needs
to be calibrated probably way more often
than most of the the normal gyms are
doing it today so if you're running on a
treadmill if that treadmill is saying
that you're doing 6 kilometers when you
actually ran 5 that obviously the
calorie count will be off and what about
using heart rate monitors are those any
better not really in a study published
in 2017 Matson tested the calorie
counters of several wrist porn monitors
the most accurate one was off by an
average of 27 percent and the least
accurate it was off by a whopping 93%
which can translate to hundreds of
calories and those heart rate monitors
built into exercise machines at the gym
might be even worse he says now that's
not to say you should ignore calorie
counters altogether they can be helpful
for measuring your progress if you stick
to the same machine at the gym but
unless you're writing a well calibrated
stationary bike the truth is you're
unlikely to get an accurate count
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