Calories burned

MouldyOldDough

I have a DKN exercise bike with a built in calorie counter

This morning - I reached the magical figure of 300 calories in 10 minutes at level 20 at a constant 20kmph - how accurate is this calorie counter going to be ?

I have no idea what 300 calories feels like......

Exodi

I'd say calorie counters on exercise equipment famously overstate calorie burn.

They have no way of knowing how much you weigh - the body will expend considerably more energy if you are bigger. As an example, a Harvard study suggests that a 125lb person (8st 13lb / 56.8kg) jogging at 5mph for 10 mins would burn about 80 calories. A 155lb (11st 1lb/70.5kg) person would burn about 100 calories and a 185lb person (13st 3lb/84.1kg) would burn around 120 calories. You can see here that the heavier person exhausted 50% more calories doing the same exercise.

This isn't just if a person if overweight, in fact a person with a high level of muscle would require more calories (as muscle consumes more calories than fat). The larger the mass, the more energy it takes to move.

That's also not considering gender (where men require more calories as they naturally have higher muscle to fat proportions).

I don't know what level 20 is, but 300 calories burned in 10 minutes is extreme and to reach that likely would require someone to be sustaining maximum intensity exercise for 10 minutes straight (like sprinting). Not impossible, but unlikely.

Grumpy_chap

MouldyOldDough said:

I have a DKN exercise bike with a built in calorie counter

This morning - I reached the magical figure of 300 calories in 10 minutes at level 20 at a constant 20kmph - how accurate is this calorie counter going to be ?

I have no idea what 300 calories feels like......

300 calories in 10 minutes would be extremely impressive.

By comparison, if I run 5k (which takes much longer than 10 minutes), my tracker records a little under 300 calories.

Do you have access to a fitness tracker / watch that can give a more personal assessment of calories burned than the fitness machine?

Martin Lewis claims to burn an average of just under 4k calories in a day.
He must eat a lot.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6580142/martin-lewis-in-2024-i-averaged-24-703-steps-a-day-burning-3-850-calories-heres-how

DullGreyGuy

MouldyOldDough said:

I have a DKN exercise bike with a built in calorie counter

This morning - I reached the magical figure of 300 calories in 10 minutes at level 20 at a constant 20kmph - how accurate is this calorie counter going to be ?

I have no idea what 300 calories feels like......

they are very crude calculators as things like your weight will make a notable difference and yet most dont ask for this. They also tend to run high to encourage you to do more as realising you have to do 90 minutes on an exercise bike just to use up the calories of a single chocolate bar can be discouraging for many. 

hamiltonian

MouldyOldDough said:

I have a DKN exercise bike with a built in calorie counter

This morning - I reached the magical figure of 300 calories in 10 minutes at level 20 at a constant 20kmph - how accurate is this calorie counter going to be ?

I have no idea what 300 calories feels like......

FWIW, when I was at my fittest, 300 calories would be approx 30  minutes of 'absolutely ball-breaking flat out about to puke' effort....  typically a in a 60 min spin class I might get close to 600 calories burned if I absolutely thrash myself.... and that's on a 'reasonably accurate' heart-strap heart-rate correlated with age, weight etc...
The other metric would be how big a puddle of sweat you have under the bike....  

Okell

MouldyOldDough said:

I have a DKN exercise bike with a built in calorie counter

This morning - I reached the magical figure of 300 calories in 10 minutes at level 20 at a constant 20kmph - how accurate is this calorie counter going to be ?

I have no idea what 300 calories feels like......

The figure is almost completely meaningless as a measure of calories (or "extra" calories above BMR) burned.

It's only real value is for comparing different exercise sessions to see the relative work done in one session as against another

hamiltonian said:

MouldyOldDough said:

I have a DKN exercise bike with a built in calorie counter

This morning - I reached the magical figure of 300 calories in 10 minutes at level 20 at a constant 20kmph - how accurate is this calorie counter going to be ?

I have no idea what 300 calories feels like......

FWIW, when I was at my fittest, 300 calories would be approx 30  minutes of 'absolutely ball-breaking flat out about to puke' effort....  typically a in a 60 min spin class I might get close to 600 calories burned if I absolutely thrash myself.... and that's on a 'reasonably accurate' heart-strap heart-rate correlated with age, weight etc...

That's interesting.  I'm nowhere near my fittest (plus I'm probably 10kg overweight!) but I supposedly got 300 calories out of a 34 minute relatively gentle interval session on Sunday.  My watch predicted full recovery within 24 hours(!).

On Saturday my wife and I did a relatively leisurely 5 mile stroll in two hours and my watch told me I'd burned 682 calories - apparently.

I use a Coros Pace 2 that I've also compared with my wife's Garmin 245(?) and both watches show widely differing calorie consumption for the same running sessions.

I don't believe any of these devices give meangful results when it comes to calories burned.  (Except fo comparing the effort put into different sessions - and even then I'm not sure)

Grumpy_chap

Inspired by this thread I did a session on the assault bike and 100 calories took 14:38 minutes:seconds.

Grumpy_chap

Another exercise comparison for calories burned.  338 calories on the treadmill this morning took 28:11 minutes:seconds.  For the same exercise, my fitness tracker logged 291 calories.  I could have run the distance covered faster so, presumably, accrued the same calorie burn quicker, but no way could I have been three times quicker.

adrich

I agree that 300 calories in 10 minutes sounds impressive. It is possible, but I'd check it, though.