Saturday, January 12, 2008

we can dance if we want to

Quick question!

I have been using fitday.com, but I am frustrated with the different calorie counts for activity. Fitday is drastically different than what the treadmill says.

I've heard that others use other trackers: dailyplate, sparkpeople, etc.

Which do you use? What do you like about it?

Thanks in advance!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

You can pretty much ignore anything that the treadmill tells you since that is woefully inaccurate - same goes for all cardio machines. The machiens have a tendency to overestimate the amount of calories you burn.

The only real way to tell your calorie burn is to hook yourself up to a bazillion electrodes and have a scientist monitor your exertion - but of course, who in the hell does that?

I just use Sparkpeople's fitness tracker out of convenience, but you're better off using heart rate, distance or time as a measure.

Hanlie said...

One of my favourite bloggers, Shaping my Way, did a post comparing all the different tracking sites recently. She's an ex fat girl, turned gym instructor, so she's qualified to make these comparisons. The link is http://shapingmyway.blogspot.com/2007_12_30_archive.html

Krissie said...

Marshmallow - I know the machines are off, but I figure if I average fitday and what the machine says, I might be somewhere in the right ballpark. And, actually, FitDay has a much higher calorie burn than what the bike says. But the treadmill is usually pretty close.

And thanks, Hanlie, for the link. Very useful!

Lidian said...

I really love the Daily Plate - I was using FitDay and got tired of it, but DP seems easier to me and they give you cool badges too! And it is very easy to use.

The Fat Foreigner said...

I like dailyplate too, it has a good selection of foods and it's easy to add new ones, and it doesn;t have a userinterface that makes you want to stab yourself the way fitday does.

Anonymous said...

I've never done any comparisons, so I can't help you. I'm dismayed to read that treadmills can be inaccurate. Anyway, that's what I use. I have my own treadmill and I put my weight in and it (supposedly) calculates how many calories I've burned. The calories burned depends on speed and elevation, too, so I don't know how I'd calculate that any other way (???).

Unknown said...

I was using the bodybugg since May (like the Biggest Loser contestants) and trust that program pretty well since it has four different sensors to help calculate how many calories you burn throughout the whole day. On overage, while on an elliptical at the gym, the bodybugg program would tell me I was burning 12 calories per minute while the machine was estimated 14 or more...

Swizzlepop said...

I use Spark People and just hope it's at least close to accurate.