"I Just Burned 500 Calories on the Elliptical!"

Ummmmm…. No you didn’t.

A lot of factors come into play when it comes to caloric expenditure: age, weight, BMI, overall fitness and your experience on that particular machine. So even if a treadmill or elliptical asks for your weight, it doesn’t know whether you’re 20 or 50, a couch potato or an elite athlete, fat, thin, experienced or not, etc, etc, etc. And each of these factors makes a difference!

What’s an exerciser to do?

Stop using the measure of supposed calories burned. There is a better way to gauge your workout. One simple word: INTENSITY. And you don’t need a machine to gauge it for you. Who do you think is going to burn more fat: the person who strolls along until the calorie count hits 300? Or the person who goes all-out, balls-to-the-wall until he/she is drenched in sweat and can’t go anymore? Use your own internal body sense and you will reach your goals faster.

The Bottom Line

Even if the calorie counter was pinpoint accurate (it’s not), I still urge you to ramp up the intensity and listen to your body. You’ll never get dead-on exactness counting calories, so focus on the bigger picture and you’ll reach your goals faster.