Have you ever finished a work-out on the treadmill and felt
really great about the amount of
calories burned but somewhere in the back of your mind you did not fully
believe the number on the machine? I have. I have also used my GPS running
watch to estimate the calories I burned on a run and been skeptical of the
large amount expenditure I supposedly put out. I hate to be to bearer of bad
news but if like me, you are distrustful of the gym machine’s calorie usage
estimate it’s for a good reason. The calories burned on a machine are at best
an estimate of the amount of calories an average person with the same weight
would burn given your speed, distance, and elevation. The number does not take
into account factors such as lean body mass, genetics, and efficiency of
exercise that all play are role in one’s total energy expenditure. In fact, one paper from the American College
of Sports Medicine found that calorie counters on one brand of elliptical were
about 26% higher than lab based estimates.
Calories
are a unit of energy that represent the rate at which oxygen is used to
breakdown our food products. In order to really measure calories one must
measure the amount of oxygen used. The reason heart rate monitors estimate
calorie expenditure more accurately than treadmills and other gym machines is because
when the body needs more oxygen to fuel its organs the heart begins to beat
faster which is detected via a heart rate monitor. The companies that develop
heart rate monitors have used research to develop their own formulas that
couple heart rate with variables such as age, weight, sex and body composition to estimate calorie usage. Treadmills and gym
machines use formulas as well but factor in less individual variables leaving
more room for error. Overall, the number or calories burned reported by the gym
machine should be taken with a grain of salt and definitely not a prescription
to the amount of food one should eat in a day.
The
good news is that the calorie number on the machines at the gym can provide a
means to set goals and measure your effort level. Think about it, if you
repeatedly use the same machine at the gym and one day you burn 200 calories
and the next day you burned 220 calories you worked harder on day two. Try
letting go of calories numbers and focus on improving speed and performance and
you begin to naturally burn more calories. If you must have a calorie guide to
help plan you meal plan I recommend getting your metabolism tested at our office
with our indirect calorimeter , Reevue. For more information visit our website http://www.rbitzer.com/services/for-clients/metabolic-testing/.
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