Calories burned

[Georgiana]

I usually enter my exercise in Fitday to see how many calories I burned. At the gym, some machines also have this thing that shows how much you've burned. My question is, how accurate are these numbers?

Yesterday for example, I played badminton for 2 h straight. In Fitday, it says I burned over 500 calories. This sounds awesome, of course... but I only ate ~1400 calories, so the caloric deficit is a bit larger than I would like it to be. So should I eat more (no, I'm not hungry and I really feel happy with my meals) or is this fine? Or maybe the numbers on Fitday are wrong and in reality I burned significantly less than 500 cal?

[blueberrylady]

I don't know about fitday's accuracy but I personally have never trusted the monitors on exercise machines because they can't take into account your size and amount of muscle, so how can they be accurate? At least Fitday knows a little more about you but is it enough? I just figure that if I'm eating right and exercising almost every day, I have to lose weight and the only number that counts in the end is the one on the scale. But then, what do I know? LOL

[TitianWasp]

Typically, the machines are considered generously innacurate. Sometimes by as high as 50%. I'd compare activitie calorie counts from a couple of sources until you get a consistent idea of calories burned for your body type/age/gender and exercise type and time, and then use that number as your guideline.

The number on the machine can make you feel good though!

[Brook]

The numbers are inflated- bigtime. Like TitanWasp said, it depends on your age, weight, height, body composition, etc etc. The machines have no way of customizing any of that info. The same holds true for Fitday. They're all estimations.

At the end of the day, it's not the number on the scale that counts. It's the number on the tape measure - not the scale- that really counts!

[Georgiana]

Good if they are exaggerated, at least I know. I realize they depend on age, weight and stuff, but I was wondering if they are ridiculously off.

From your replies I understand that I shouldn't care about a large calorie deficit neither as long as I'm not hungry. That's great! Fewer the things I have to worry about, the happier I am!

Brook, I lost about 15 lbs on Atkins this spring without exercising (I'm not sure I can call it Atkins since I didn't exercise, but you got the point...). This time I'm exercising 6 days/week, and it makes such a big difference! I do have almost 10 lbs more than I did at my lowest Atkins weight, but I feel and look much better.

Thank y'all for the replies!

[Brook]

The difference in our bodies with exercise is nothing less than amazing, isn't it?!! Good for you!!

I've seen numbers that say the machines and stuff overestimate by as much as 20-25%. Who cares? You're working and getting all the benefits!