Everyone knows those workouts, the ones that “swear” to burn 500 calories in less than 50 minutes, regardless of body type, shape, age, or weight. Think again.
You may walk out of a cycling class looking like you just took an afternoon swim, but don’t be fooled. The amount of calories you burn are completely dependable on how much work you put forth during your workout, body type, weight, and age.
Well and Good spoke with trainers from various studios to get the truth about the factors that must be taken into consideration when measuring the amount of calories burned during a workout.
According to the article on Well and Good’s website, “the more you weigh, the more calories you’ll burn as you increase your heart rate, because more mass means more energy needed to get moving.” For example, if a person weighing 100 pounds, and another 200, the heavier person may be burning twice the amount of calories.
Ciraran Friel, a medical director at La Palestra, said that another factor is muscle mass. The more muscle mass an individual has, the more calories are burnt. “When we’re building muscle mass, we’re creating more metabolically active cells,” Friel told Well and Good.
Other factors are your fitness level and how hard you work during your workout session. Although the more “fit” you are, the less calories you burn, the healthier you are. In order to burn more calories when you “plateau” at a certain exercise, switch up the muscles you are using. For example, take up cycling or swimming instead of running each day. In order to get the most out of your exercise, don’t compare yourself to the person next to you. Workout to your level of intensity; just because the person next to you is sweatier, that doesn’t mean they necessarily worked harder. Also, according to the article, high levels of intensity have been proven to continue your calorie burn throughout the day… even while sitting at your work desk.
So when these workouts claim that they’ll make you burn 500 calories, to some they might! But don’t take these claims just as you wouldn’t believe claims on diet pills.
To more efficiently measure personal calorie burn, there are fitness bands on the market to measure your individual goals. Brands that feature these fitness bands are: Nike, Jawbone, and Fitbit.
I never trust the numbers on fitness machines. The machine doesn’t even know if I am a male or a female and right there is a RED FLAG because men obviously burn more calories than women. The machine also doesn’t take into account height either, which helps determine calorie burn as well. I just like to sweat, and I know exercise is healthy, that’s all that matters to me! 🙂
I never put too much weight (haha) into the amount of calories different exercises say they burn. I just try to do the best workout I can and then focus on healthy eating and keeping track of those calories, which I know I can rely on.