You Can Fool Mother Machine

You Can Fool Mother Machine

According to a University of Tennessee study, the calorie calculators on many exercise machines are inaccurate. Even worse, they don’t seem to be inaccurate in the user’s favor. Stairsteppers, for example, often indicate the expenditure of 1 to six calories more per minute than are actually burned. This is a significant number if you are working out for 30 minutes or more, and other apparatus can be off even more.
Suppose, for instance, that you spend half an hour on an aerobic machine that is off by six calories a minute. That’s 180 calories—equal to a small bowl of breakfast cereal and skim milk or a container of low-fat or nonfat yogurt—each time you work out. In addition to some of the inherent miscounts, the machines also assume that you are not leaning on the support bar, which lessens your calorie use.
You can lie to the machine and outsmart it or extend the time you spend on the device,but if you do, you are only cheating yourself. If you do it right, you won’t have to work out as long to get the results you want. When you are programming your workout profile, Fitness magazine suggests that you subtract about 20 percent off your body weight or stay on the machine until it says you have burned about 25 percent more calories than your goal for that session.