Because the treadmill lies.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
First, you should know that the number you see on the treadmill and other gym equipment is probably wildly inaccurate.
"Usually exercise equipment – like ellipticals and stair climbers – isn't the best thing to go off of [when it comes to judging calorie burn]," Luke Corey, a registered dietician and sports nutritionist for high level athletes with EXOS Performance Training, tells BuzzFeed Life. "[Machines] only require you to enter your age, height, and weight and then compare it to the average. The calories you burn is extremely specific to your body, which is why we don't even look at those numbers here with our athletes." Research backs this up.
Focus Features / Via syddysb.tumblr.com
And that's because the calories you burn depend on a lot of factors that the machines at the gym can't track.
A lot more goes into determining how many calories your workouts burn than just your age, weight, and gender.
"There are so many factors that go into how many calories you burn that the gym machines don't consider, such as the level of intensity you're working out at, your body temperature, your workout environment (temperature, wind, rain), your muscle mass, your resting metabolic rate, your fitness level, and they're also horrible at tracking your heart rate." says Heather Milton, M.S., C.S.C.S., exercise physiologist at the Sports Performance Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. "The fitness trackers at the gym aren't individualized enough and that's why they're usually so far off in their estimates."
Your daily diet, sleep habits, body-fat percentage, and general metabolism also come into play. Here's a lot more information on that, if you're curious.
Let's go over how your body burns calories. It's actually all about oxygen consumption.
You’ve probably noticed that when you are pushing yourself hard in a workout your heartbeat increases and your breathing gets short and rapid. This happens because your heart is trying to get as much oxygen as it can and pump it out to your muscles so they can produce ATP [adenosine triphosphate] energy, which is what fuels your body during the workout.
Now, for every one liter of oxygen you breathe in, you burn five calories. So people who huff and puff more during their workouts will be burning more calories than people who don't breathe as heavily. This means that a workout will be more taxing — and will therefore burn more calories — for someone who is in worse shape.
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