Question:
Is my elliptical machine accurate-30mins 133 calories???

I just received my elliptical machine today Fitness Quest Elliptical 1100HRA-2 I was on it for 30 minutes-(feel like i'm going to die) I did a level 2 program which is called rolling and it goes from lo to high-varying back and forth-I stayed on lvels 1 and 2 basically with some 3 and 4 levels just to feel the intensity diference-It says I did 3.7 miles on it but that I only burned 139 calories-I', 239.5, 24yo, and stayed in or very close to my target heart range-When I used to do the elliptical trainer at the gym I usually burned like 450 calories, but those machines also asked for me to enger my age and weight-Should I discard the inaccuracy of the calories and just use the machine for the workout-it did give me a good workout-BTW I paid 400 for the machine -Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions    — TotallyTori (posted on March 9, 2005)

March 9, 2005
Well I entered the info into my FitDay software but it did not have an "eliptical machine" choice so I chose Cross Country Running and it gave me 316 calories. Does your machine come with a pamphlet that tells you how many calories are burned pre hour on each level? If so you can program a custom type of exercise into the fitday software and as long as each time you log it you put the time & distance, it should spit out a fairly accurate number. HTH!
   — MagickalMom

March 9, 2005
Your calories burned are going to vary depending on distance and intensity and your weight is critical . There is a formula I learned in high school about weight/distance moved/ and energy(calories burned) If you can not program in your weight it is probably working on a set "average" weight, & not necessarily accurate to your weight.
   — **willow**

March 9, 2005
I was told you take your weight and divide that by 150, which is the average weight used on most exercise equipment. Take that number and multiply by the calories burned on your equipment to get the actual calories burned. So it would be 239.5/150 x 139 = 221.94 calories burned. <p>I was also told to shoot for 2,000 exercise calories per week. For me I try to do 30 to 45 minutes on my eliptical 5 or 6 days per week.
   — ckreh

March 10, 2005
Hi- Yes, discard the data. If the elliptical trainer does not ask for your weight, then it defauslts to an average, so most machines give you the average for a person who weighs 150#. If you were to go to ballyfitness.com and log in the same exercise and include your weight, distance, and level of intensity, it would give you an accurate calorie count for the work you've done. Don't give up...
   — DianaE